


Bad Boars Ain't Got Nothin' On Us

by Yeah_JSmith



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Consent is Sexy, Conspiracy to Commit Murder, E for Everything, Established Relationship, F/M, Gun Puns, Guns, Idiots in Love, Noodle Incidents, Stun Guns, all the police work was harmed in the making of this story, and they all lived ridiculously ever after, bunnies everywhere, fluffy friendship, ish, less stupid historical references, puns, small town, stupid pop culture references, unsanctioned use of handcuffs, weaponized politeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-21 09:33:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11354712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: Three months after Chief Bogo officially retires, Nick and Judy are assigned a case in a town called Meadowbrook. While there, Nick learns a bit about Judy, nothing about farming, and heaps about country living. Judy says it’s not all running for your life and counting bullets, but this is exactly what Nick expected.Or; The One With The Excessive Gun Violence, Because MassGains Has Vision And I Was Super Drunk.





	1. Act I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is supposed to parody those hilarious buddy cop action flicks whose plots are just a hastily thrown together excuse to have people shoot each other and blow shit up, so some of these scenes are really short and some of them are really long. Imagine a camera cut at the line break. I'm one of those directors.
> 
> MassGains, if you’re reading this, this is your fault. I mean, it’s my fault, but you started it, and Captain Morgan egged me on. Anyway, please enjoy.

It was raining, because of course it was. Nothing said “happy anniversary” like an unexplained temporary transfer and a long drive in inclement weather. Judy’s eyes were dark, focused on the road, and Nick wanted to say something to make her laugh, but his cell phone was losing bars rapidly and he could hardly get a squeak out. A little hick town like Meadowbrook was no place for a city fox like him.

“The second someone puts a pitchfork through my tail, I'm quitting,” he blurted as his phone’s reception finally flatlined.

“Nobody does that, Nick,” Judy sighed.

“Anymore! Nobody does that in your hometown anymore! Bunnyburrow is the biggest town in the Tri-Burrows area, but  _Meadowbrook?_ Carrots, they’ll eat me alive.”

She reached over to pat his knee. “Don't worry, honey, I’ll protect you from the big bad farmers. Can't marry a skeleton, now, can I?”

“And they say romance is dead.”

“Better dead than dying, am I right?” She breathed deeply after the lame joke and let it out, looking as tense as he felt. “Look, Nick, I'm not excited about this either. I fit in with the mammals of Zootopia far better than I ever did with the mammals of Bunnyburrow. I'm not a farmer or a...well, I don't actually know what else there is to do in Meadowbrook. Knitting? Baking? Singing songs about faraway places? Anyway, it’s not like they're going to turn into slavering zombies and try to eat our brains. All we have to do is solve our case and we can get back to the city.”

Meadowbrook was No-Mammal’s Land, technically too far away to properly be part of Zootopia but not close enough to anywhere else to be under another jurisdiction. Wolford would have been the ideal candidate for the job, having actually  _grown up_ in Meadowbrook, but he was on forced medical leave after taking a bullet to the gut on his off-hours. Judy had been on an absolute  _tear_ afterward, which was probably one of the reasons Spottson had decided to send them away.

She was a little scary when she was mad. Most mammals didn’t realize it, because she wasn’t mad very often. Then again, most mammals didn’t try to kill her friends.

“Wish we knew what Spottson  _wanted_ from us,” he groused, taking her paw to kiss it. Just briefly. She had to drive, after all.

But that smile was the reason he’d taken the chance. It warmed him from nose to tail-tip and softened her tone when she said, “Probably to get us out of his fur after that last case, with the, uh, organ meats. And your horrible references.”

“I’ll have you know that was a  _quality_ running joke, Carrots, and Spottson just doesn't have a sense of humor.”

“It really wasn't. Especially since Sweeney Tod is a  _fox_ and Mrs. Fluffett is a  _bunny.”_

 _“You_ laughed,” he pointed out sanctimoniously. It was true. She hadn’t been able to contain her giggles, and Spottson had been 187% done with both of them.

She bit her lip, obviously embarrassed. He wanted to lick it, but he refrained, because, you know, driving. “My sense of humor shouldn't be a measuring stick. Use Clawhauser next time.”

“Clawhauser doesn’t  _get_ my jokes.”

“Precisely.”

“Oh, Carrots, you never let me have any fun anymore. Is this what married life is? Being told  _no_ and  _stop that this instant_ and  _pick up that jumper, Nicholas Piberius Wilde, before I burn it?_ I’m regretting this already and we’re not even hitched yet.”

At this, she rolled her eyes. She could always see through his dramatics, which was usually nice, but it meant that he had a hard time surprising her with anything. “That sweater is hideous and I’m only sorry I’ve never thought to burn it, but I’m not your mother, and if that’s what you expect, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

Nick put on the saddest expression he could muster and asked, “You won’t even spank me when I’m bad?”

The fur-bristling terror of nearly swerving off the road was well worth the mixture of embarrassment, anger, and (oddly) excitement marching across her face. He lived for moments like this, when he could really knock her off guard. Her voice was steady, but more high-pitched than usual, when she said, “Sweet suffering succotash, Nick, don’t say stuff like that when I’m driving!”

“Sorry,” he lied. “I couldn’t help myself. You should see your  _face.”_

“Maybe I  _will_ punish you,” she grumbled, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips nonetheless. “Give you a toothbrush and make you clean the bathroom while I eat  _all_ the blueberries and criticize your technique.”

Seven years ago, the thought of doing manual labor with his back to someone would have terrified him. The paranoia cultivated over years of living on the street was still present, still informed many of his decisions; distrust was pervasive. Nick couldn’t stand the thought of...not controlling who saw what and when. But when it came to Judy, as dangerous as it was, he could trust again. She made him feel safe. Putting his life in her paws was as natural as breathing. He had never been a thrill-seeker, but she’d opened up an entirely new avenue of discovery; he’d learned to cohabitate, to capitulate, to have sex without fear. He’d be open to some of the ideas she’d described while utterly toasted at last year’s Solstice...if he could convince her, that was, that he wasn’t some kind of delicate, precious flower that she had to preserve. That was sweet, but sometimes it got a little...well, not old, exactly, but there wasn’t a better word for it.

(Someday he’d be brave enough to bring it up.)

Until then?

“You just want to watch my tail while I scrub.”

She snorted. “It’s  _highly_ suspicious, following you around everywhere. I think it’s stalking you. I’m just...looking out for my partner.”

“Always on duty, eh?”

“Always.” She side-eyed him, nibbling on her lip again. It was horribly distracting, and for a moment he couldn’t even remember what their conversation had been about. “Feel better?”

“...Yeah,” he replied, sinking back into the passenger seat.

“It won’t be so bad. Mammals in the country are pretty nice.”

“Nice like Grandma Fran?”

She huffed. “Okay,  _polite._ They won’t often say anything mean to your face. Unless they’re old, but if you handle it right, you can wrangle free cookies out of the family members who are embarrassed.”

He smirked at her, enough to let her know he was doing it but not enough to let her know he was doing it  _on purpose._ “You just can’t stop the blackmail, can you, Honey Bunny?”

“Is it really blackmail if they deserve it, Lovecup?”

“You took the same classes I did, and no clever pop culture references will save you. But far be it from me to tell you what to do. We’re from the city where anyone can be anything. If you want to be a con artist, you  _be_ a con artist.”

“Ugh. I see what you did there, and it’s less funny than you think it is. Besides,” she said, overly cheerful, “I never said I actually did it. I only suggested that you  _could.”_

“Of course. I get it. You always give me plausible deniability, and I appreciate the out.”

Nick settled his head against the window, watching the rain as they crawled down the road. The speed limit was an intolerable fifteen miles per hour through the canyon, and it would take them two full hours to reach Meadowbrook from their current position, but Judy was a stickler for road safety even when nobody could see them. (As much as he liked to tease her about her driving, she was far better behind the wheel than he was. He’d white-knuckled his way through the driving test at the academy and decided never to drive again if he could help it.)

The farther they drove, the realer the scenery became, artificially planted trees turning into actual nature, impeccably engineered streams meeting the Lowland River. He’d seen the same kind of thing before at higher speeds a few times before, when Judy had taken him to Bunnyburrow to spend time with her overwhelming family, but this was different. Trains did all the work for you. What if their car broke down or they got rear-ended or a giant snake wrapped around their car and ate them?

Right, and dragons existed.

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to sleep. Absolutely not. He was just resting them for a moment. In no universe would he sleep –

“Nick, get a picture,” said Judy shrilly, smacking his upper arm and drawing him out of dreamland. There was a little drool on his chin and he wondered how Judy could put up with him every morning. Gross.

“What,” he asked fuzzily. They were parked on the side of the road. “Did we run out of gas?”

“What? No. Get a picture of that sign! My phone’s dead or I would.”

He squinted in the direction Judy had pointed. An old, rickety sign hung, lopsided, from an equally rickety frame. On it, the words “Welcome to Happy Valley” had been etched, presumably at the tail end of the Industrial Revolution, but someone had more recently crossed out the “H” and spray-painted “Cr” above it.

“Oof. Classy. You sure know how to woo a guy.”

“Cheap puns and opportunities for mockery are the fastest way to a male’s heart, everybody knows that,” she teased. “C’mon, Nick, take a picture!”

Nick obliged, sticking his head and torso out the window to get a good angle. Judy bounced in her seat. He couldn't remember her being this amped to visit her family in Bunnyburrow. “What's so exciting, Carrots?”

“It’s a new town! We’ll get to meet so many new animals!”

“And probably get burned at the stake for our interspecies heathenry,” he murmured, rolling up his window again.

“Don't be a Dudley Downer. Everyone will love us and we’ll probably leave with half a dozen useful contacts.” He squinted at her and she shifted. “What?”

“Just trying to figure out if you’re a horrible optimist or a jaded cynic. Since when do you see mammals as useful contacts?”

She laughed and started the car again. “Since always. I'm a cop. That doesn't mean they can't be friends too.”

He still couldn't quite agree, but he let it lie. After all, this was  _Judy._ She could make friends – and had done it, on occasion – with the drunken degenerates in the holding cells. With her by his side, anything was possible. Except maybe surviving in a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland, but honestly, how probable was that?

* * *

“I can’t believe it was  _closed,”_ she seethed, tugging on her ear-tips as she marched back and forth. He watched her, half-amused, half-annoyed. He sort of agreed with her, but she was too funny when she got worked up like this. “What kind of shuck-eared moron decides to close the police station at six in the evening?”

“Probably the same...uh... _shuck-eared moron_ who wants to go get drunk at the local...tavern? Is that what they call bars out in the sticks?”

“No, but we should call it that anyway.” She leaned her head back and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, before moving to flop onto the bed beside him. The comforter _looked_ clean enough, but frankly, Nick was afraid to look at the room under a blacklight, because it smelled like heavy-duty detergent and stain remover. There were nicks on the wood that told stories of faceless patrons spending time pawcuffed to the bedframe. The carpet was thin, unraveling and a bit ratty, but the radiator was quite ornate and the dresser was a solid, heavy thing. None of the woodwork was crude, but it  _was_ dated. All in all, it was nicer than he’d imagined country hotel rooms might be, but much more sketchy than city hotels.

The owner, a plaid-clad and oddly sleek hare named Pete Wicker, had leered at them when he’d said they only had one single-bed room available, clearly expecting them to be disturbed, but Nick had been sharing a bed with Judy since before they’d started sleeping together and Judy was a very physical mammal. The hare had been beaten before he’d begun.

“Sorry, Nick, I shouldn’t be all hissy about it. It’s not  _your_ fault.”

He leaned over to smooth her tail. It wasn’t his favorite part of her, but he had a weakness for fluffy things and she liked the sensation, so it worked out, generally. When he wanted to calm her down, he stroked her tail. When he wanted to rile her up, he played with her ears. It was a nice system of touch and response they’d established fairly early on in their...whatever it was they had.

He often wondered what, exactly, it was. When Judy had proposed to him out of the blue exactly one year prior, they had been sleeping with each other for a while and living together for much longer than that. She had mostly been worried about end of life matters, but she had also mentioned tax benefits and the possibility of double insurance coverage and maybe buying a house together.

_(“And you’re pretty good in bed, which is a definite plus,” she’d added with a smile that promised more than just sleep.)_

Judy said “I love you” all the time, and he believed her, but he knew from a prior conversation that she didn’t mean it romantically. He said “I love you” less often, but he was  _in_  love with her. What they had was a mutually beneficial arrangement, an engagement of pragmatism, and he had accepted immediately, but wondered if one or both of them would end up broken-hearted. Judy had never promised emotional or physical fidelity and he’d never asked for it. According to his research (long ago cleared from his search history), rabbits were usually monogamous. If she didn’t see him as a romantic interest, did that mean that she would eventually move on? Would she ask for a divorce? Would she just keep nesting with Nick, but have a real bond outside of their home?

He just had to treat her like the goddess she was and hope she fell in love with him. Or, barring that, got addicted to his body. Either would work.

“We’ll meet them in the morning,” he soothed, resting his snout on her upper back. “We weren’t even supposed to get in until tomorrow anyway.”

“I know. I know, I just...if Meadowbrook is sleepy enough that their police are all off-duty in the evenings, why do they need us? What’s Spottson’s game?”

“He  _was_ a little too vague for comfort, but maybe we’re supposed to whip them into shape. You’re good at that, and I’m your partner, so it would make sense, right?”

“Y –  _ooh._ Keep doing that,” she said as he scritched the base of her tail with more force than he usually did.

“You’re the boss,” he quipped, but he was too lazy to put much effort into the tone.

The tension was visibly leaving her, seeming to sink through her torso and into the mattress. She made those little satisfied noises that always made him feel like he was doing something purely right, and after a lifetime of wrong, moments like these were nice. It was the same reason Nick brought pastries into the station and offered to cover unpopular shifts rather more often than was necessary; he’d never been a compulsive giver, but it was a good feeling to see Clawhauser’s eyes light up or hear Higgins’ sigh of relief.

“You’re too good to me,” she murmured.

“No such thing.”

“Lemme up.” He obliged. They both sat up. Nick splayed awkwardly on the edge of the bed and Judy took the opportunity to settle neatly between his thighs. She took his paws, placing a kiss on the left one. Earnestly, she said, “I really do mean it. These past few years have been a whirlwind, but I always felt solid because I had you. Every time I doubted myself, you were there to cheer me on. Every time I messed up, you supported me anyway. You make me a better Judy Hopps by being Nick Wilde. If there’s anything you want...anything I can do...you’re good to me, but sometimes I feel like I take more than I give back, and that’s not how I want our marriage to work.”

“You never leave me wanting,” he replied. “I don’t feel like it’s uneven at all.”

It was true. Despite their different approaches to this relationship, they both put their all into it. Judy was a good friend and a good partner. She was generous in bed and always took time out of her day to say something nice or otherwise positive about him, which seemed like a small thing, but it wasn’t, not to him. They were equal partners professionally and animally, and according to popular media, that was rare.

She leaned up and kissed him on the muzzle, just missing the corner of his mouth by a fraction. “Just keep it in mind. If you ever feel like I’m being a drain. You can always talk to me.”

“I know, Judy.”

“I love it when you say my name.”

He grinned. “That’s why I reserve it for special occasions.”

“Right, well.” She tugged at his tie, loosening the knot. “Let’s get you out of these clothes. We might as well get to bed early so we can be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we look for some decent coffee somewhere in Happy Valley.”

“Yeah,” he said, helping her with the buttons. “Yeah, that’s probably our best option. Early bedtime.”

(They stayed up late, but neither one complained.)

* * *

As it turned out, there was a halfway decent greasy spoon on Main Street. They sold fruit-laden pancakes and strong coffee, so even if it smelled like the tail end of a skunk _(“You can’t say that out loud, Nick,” Judy had hissed, but their skunk waiter had practically laughed his stripes off),_ it was their best option for breakfast. Eight cups and some useful flirting with the waiter later, Nick’s feelings were pleasantly self-shaped and Judy was pleasantly mortified as they made their way back up Main Street toward the station.

“He was...handsome,” Judy said awkwardly, staring at her feet as they walked.

Nick raised an eyebrow. “You think so?”

“Well, I mean…” She sighed. “He’s not my type, but if you want to ask him out…”

“Oh my God, Carrots, are you  _jealous?”_

“No,” she said defensively. “I never asked for exclusivity. I can’t be jealous if we never made that agreement.”

He nudged her with his elbow, unable to keep his laughter to himself, though he was blessedly able to regulate the volume. “It’s a good thing I’m not interested in seeing anyone else right now. Imagine how crowded our room would get with three of us in there. I was just flirting. That’s what you  _do_ with servers. It’s a good way to establish a contact in a new place.”

“That makes no sense,” she said flatly.

Nick stepped around a large puddle on the cracked sidewalk. He’d never seen weeds growing through cement, except in one area of Happytown, where Judy had lived for years. He wondered if perhaps she had chosen to stay at the Grand Pangolin Arms so long because it reminded her of her home in Bunnyburrow, with its warren-like streets and mammals basically living in each other’s pockets.

Before he could reply, they reached the station, which (thankfully) was open. Nick hoped that their contact, Sheriff Ronald Westing, was in, because if Judy found out that the staff was as disorganized as the schedule, she would explode and they’d  _never_ get married.

The door creaked when they opened it. Nick half-expected to walk into a scene from a movie, with the Sheriff resting behind a desk, feet crossed atop some paperwork and a weed in his mouth. Fortunately, there was no twangy banjo playing and the lobby looked fairly normal, if small, for a station. The door to the holding cells even had a lock on it. Granted, it was a lock he could pick in about twenty seconds, but it was  _something,_ at least.

An ocelot, a badger, and a parrot stared at them. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, but Nick suspected that if he tried to tell one, he and Judy would end up being the punchline. Maybe even literally.

The parrot squawked.

“Carrots, I don't think we’re in Zootopia anymore.”

“Oh,” said the ocelot, straightening. “The city slickers ol’ Spottson foisted on us. I'm Rose, he’s Harry Stripely, and  _this_ here’s the station guardian, Fish Sticks.”

“Fish Sticks,” said Judy skeptically.

“Yeah, cos he’s as skinny as a stick and smells like old fish. Also cos it’s funny,” said Stripely.

Judy shifted. Nick knew by now what that meant; when she settled into a mild slouch, put her paw on her hip, and smiled a lazy smile, she was in Bunnyburrow Mode. He’d never understand that country politeness, because it often toed the line between sweet and poison, and he’d been a hustler for most of his life but he’d never had any punches to pull. Zootopia was still rife with bigotry, but at least mammals were fairly up-front about it. Country folk were just  _weird._

“Y’know, I’m not actually from Zootopia,” Judy said, allowing some of that country accent into her voice. She’d trained herself out of it growing up, from what he understood, but it was useful when they were dealing with, well, mammals like Rose and Stripely.

Rose raised an eyebrow, which was actually pretty impressive for an ocelot. “No?”

“Nah, I grew up on the Hopps farm in Bunnyburrow. I’m Judy, by the way, Judy Hopps, and this is my partner in...stopping crime, Nick Wilde.” She stuck her paw out to shake. Rose gripped it firmly and nodded, which Nick assumed was a good thing.

Stripely took her paw afterward and kissed the back of it. Nick made a very conscious effort to ignore the pang in his gut when Judy giggled behind her other paw, really getting into character. The badger smiled charmingly at her. “It’s very nice to meetcha, Officer Hopps.”

“Oh, it’s ‘Lieutenant,’ actually, but that’s all right. Politics are such a chore. It’s lovely to meet  _you,_ Officer Stripely.”

 _Atta girl,_ he thought. What a smooth way of reminding him that, technically, she was of higher rank. Nobody liked it,  _least_ of all Judy, because she hadn’t exactly earned it; they were terribly under-staffed, though, and with pressure from above to keep “the rabbit officer” relevant, she had been gifted a position she didn’t deserve. Judy liked to  _work_ for what she had, and she’d been steamed to see Fangmeyer passed up for the promotion they had been actively working for. Still, if this job was about fixing up the Meadowbrook department, as Nick suspected, pulling rank would probably be mandatory somewhere in the near future.

 _“Lieutenant,”_ murmured Stripely. “You must be a force if you was promoted this quickly.”

“She’s a wonder,” Nick said firmly. “Now, speaking of  _superiors,_ is Sheriff Westing in?”

Both officers’ smiles became a little strained. Judy sighed and said sweetly, “Please forgive him. Bless his heart, he’s a real city boy.”

He felt vaguely insulted. That was the same kind of voice she’d used when she’d out-conned him. And the same kind of voice he’d used to try and tear her down. Ouch.

“Don’t you worry none, Lieutenant Hopps, I understand. Some folk just never slow down,” said Rose, nodding at Nick, which was somehow  _worse,_ though Nick absolutely couldn’t fathom why.

“Please, if we’re going to be working together, call me Judy.” Her smile turned regretful. “Now, as much as I’d love to sit and chat, the truth is, Nick’s not wrong. Don’t want to get paid for work we’re not doing, right?”

“That’s true enough. All right, Miz Judy, Sheriff’s just in the back gettin’ started on some transfer papers. Go on in, and mind your ears, Ron can get loud.”

Nick strode forward, anticipating Judy’s sprightly pace, but for reasons unknown, she walked much more sedately. Where was his partner? Where was  _Judy Hopps?_ This weird impostor was freaking him right out. Shaking his head and shoulders to clear out the creeps, he pushed open the door. At the last moment, he caught it and held it open for her, vaguely picturing country manners or...something. Was that what she liked? He didn’t think so, and judging by the way her back straightened and her expression became more severe, he was sure she had some con in mind.

No, as much as he liked to tease her about it, she wasn’t a con artist. There was something else going on that had catapulted them into Bizarro World.

“Hello,” she said crisply to the figure completely hidden by a large newspaper, “I’m Lieutenant Hopps and this is my partner, Detective Wilde. We’re the support that Spottson sent you.”

The newspaper came down and Nick got a look at their Meadowbrook contact. The brown wolf, presumably Ronald Westing, took a deep breath through his nose, looked between them, and laughed shortly. “Partners, huh?”

“He’s been by my side since we arrested Mayor Bellwether for her little terrorist plot,” she agreed placidly. “We work well together.”

“Right.”

Nick opened his mouth, but Judy stomped on his foot. Apparently, she was going to do all the talking. Usually, Nick was just fine with that, because it afforded him a chance to observe mammal behavior; in this case, though, there was something that felt sinister about the whole thing, and it was making him uncomfortable.

Westing put the paper down fully and glared at her. “Why y’all  _here,_ Lieutenant?”

“Why am I here?” She tittered – and  _sweet sassafras,_ was that unsettling – and switched to the sweet voice she’d used on Rose and Stripely. “Sheriff, I know why I’m here, but I’m a little worried that you  _don’t._ Why do you  _think_ I’m here?”

“Listen, I dunno what they tellt you city folks about the Coates incident, but I assure you, it’s handled. We don’t need any of y’all poking ya snouts in our business.”

“Your business  _is_ my business.” She gave Westing her best approximation of Nick’s own smarmy smile, and he was both proud and weirded out again. “Remember, Westing, you’re an elected official, but I’m the one who went into debt earning my place. So let’s try again, shall we, honey?”

The old wolf huffed, flexed one fist, and visibly forced himself to relax. “All right, Ma’am, I s’pose you got no choice in this neither, not with Spottson bitin’ both our tails. The short of it is, Mal Coates was a real proud buck, but he had a problem with the chain of command, see. I mean, pardon me, but he was a hare, and bunnies is…”

“Excitable,” Judy suggested dryly.

“Well, yes, that’s a way to say it, sure enough. Mal started goin’ to the bar, oh, about six months back now, and fer a week had ‘em all fired up about lettin’ preds like me  _bully_ them into compliance. You think it’s bad up there in the city? Try bein’ a wolf in a town full of prey. A wolf who only got elected cos the other guy died night before the election, Gaia rest ‘is soul.”

Nick frowned, half-sympathetic, half-suspicious. Judy clucked her tongue in what could be annoyance or compassion. She was getting good at doublespeak, which raised some Very Serious Questions about what, exactly, she had learned from his mother when they’d briefly cohabitated. Somehow, he doubted it was anything as benign as the recipes he traded with Bonnie over email.

“Didn’t matter, anyhow,” Westing continued. “Drunk bunnies ain’t exactly hard to subdue, again, no offense, Lieutenant.”

“None taken,” she replied demurely, but Nick knew she was lying.

Nick glanced between them and took the bait. “So you fired Coates?”

“Naw, didn’t have the chance. Marla turned on ‘im when she heard what he done. Plugged ‘im in the chest, a-ravin’ about givin’ hares a bad name.  _Her,_ I fired, and sent up to Zootopia for trial.”

“Sweet cheese and crackers.” Judy fanned her face, which Nick didn’t buy for a second, but it seemed to soften Westing, so it was probably the right move. “I’ve met jumpy bunnies, and sad bunnies, and even angry bunnies, but I’ve never heard of a  _zoicidal_ bunny. S’pose there’s a first time for everything.”

“Sweet ch...well, hell, you must be one of  _them_ Hopps,” said Westing, considerably more open. “I didn’t figure any of y’all had migrated over to the city.”

“In a manner of speaking. The job took me to the city, not the other way around, but Bunnyburrow will always be home to me.”  _That_ was a giant pile of garbage. She had told him, on several occasions, that Zootopia was her home. “It’s a little too fast there, but the work’s rewarding enough.”

It took all of Nick’s considerable willpower not to laugh at the thought of Judy slowing down for funsies.

“It’s real nice to meet ya, Lieutenant Hopps,” said Westing with a broad smile, a far cry from his previous ire. Did these country mammals just automatically trust each other, or what? The wolf held up a key ring with three keys on it and handed it to Judy. “Now, we got a whole suite set up for ya. Take the day to get yaself settled, and we’ll meet tomorrow-”

“Tonight,” Judy gently corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“Tonight,” she repeated. “Have all your officers here tonight. Six o’clock, I think.”

“That’s when we close, Lieutenant.”

“Well, sure. But, and this is just my  _opinion,_ mind, I’m thinking you’d have less problems with bunny uprisings if you had someone on duty, enforcing the law, during prime drinking hours.”

“Six o’clock,” said Westing meekly.

“Thank you kindly, Sheriff.”

Nick didn’t really know who had won in that weird little exchange, or what they’d been fighting over, or why it was so damn creepy, but he hoped he would never have to see her channel that mixture of Ruth Wilde and Bonnie Hopps again. The world, likely, would never recover.

They exited, past Rose and Stripely (and Fish Sticks), without making small talk. Nick wondered if they were making some kind of country point or she was just tired of playing a role.

In Meadowbrook, Nick noticed, Judy carried herself differently. In Zootopia, she practically vibrated with excited energy, even at home. In Bunnyburrow, she was a curious mixture of relaxed and anxious, which she had explained before; she loved her family, but as well-meaning and hospitable as they were, she always felt like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop:  _we paid for your schooling, Judy, it’s time to stop playing cops and robbers and come home._ Having met Stu and Bonnie, Nick didn’t think it was all that likely, but it was a fear that Judy had never been able to escape.

Meadowbrook, though, brought out something else entirely. She seemed to occupy every space. Well, no, that wasn’t right; after years on the force, she did that everywhere she went, taking command accidentally in every sense except an official one. She expected mammals to be  _better_ than they were and it made them want to obey. This was more like watching gravity at work. As they walked farther up Main Street to the condo they had been assigned, everyone looked up at them, and Judy waved cheerfully at all of them.

By the time they reached their destination, they had amassed a trail of kits tugging on Judy’s pant-legs and asking to wear her hat. She set it atop the head of a little raccoon, making the rest of the kits  _aww_ and the raccoon cub beam like the sun.

“Hey, Mister, what kinda bunny is  _you,”_ asked one of the kits, a tiny rabbit in a pink gingham dress.

“He ain’t a bunny, stupid, he’s a wolf,” snapped a slightly older rabbit. By their ears, he guessed they were probably siblings.

“Actually,” Judy corrected gently, “he’s a fox.”

“F-f-fox?” One of the hares shook his head fiercely. “But he has white teeth! My mama said they was made by the devil! That’s why they’s red!”

 _White teeth,_ he mouthed to Judy, highly amused. She shrugged.

“Oh, nobody really believes in the devil anymore,” said the raccoon scornfully. “His name’s just evil with a D up front. It’s like the Yule Owl. Just a story to make sure you don’t do anythin’ dumb.”

“Maybe the Yule Owl never dropped nothin’ down  _your_ chimney cos you keep a-drawin’ on ya homework,  _Solomon,”_ retorted the hare.

“You really think there’s a talkin’ owl flies around in December droppin’ the right presents in the right places? It’s just ya parents. The owl  _and_ the devil. Specially the devil.”

The youngest rabbit started to cry.

“Okay, kittens, that’s enough of that,” said Judy sharply, picking up the crying kit and rocking her a bit. “I can’t say anything about whether the stories about the Yule Owl are true, but how about y’all go on home to your mamas and give them hugs and kisses, just in case. If it’s your parents, they’ll know you love them, and if it’s really a talking owl, it’ll remember how good you are.”

Most of the kits scampered. Judy gave the smallest one to her older brother and they followed the others, stopping a few paces away so that the little one could wave goodbye. The only one who stayed was the raccoon wearing Judy’s hat. He stared at them with an adorable intensity that only children, and occasionally Stu Hopps, could manage.

“Can we help you,” Nick asked mildly.

“You said to go kiss my mama,” said the cub.

“Or your daddy,” said Judy.

“Well I don’t have either, so I don’t have to do what you say.” The cub crossed his arms sullenly. “And you ain’t my mama, so you can’t smack me for ignorin’ you.”

“That’s impeccable logic there, Tiny,” said Nick, at the same time that Judy exclaimed, “Oh, you poor thing!”

Typical.

“You might think you don’t have to do what we say. Technically, that’s true,” Nick told Solomon, kneeling down beside him, “but it’s probably best if you do. See, the hat that my hay-munching partner let you wear is the real deal. We’re police officers. What we want is to make sure you little ones are safe. And not playing in traffic. And doing well in school. And not spray-painting bad words on blank walls. All things that I was  _terrible_ at when I was your age, so maybe don’t listen to me, but definitely listen to Lieutenant Carrots here. She knows what’s what.”

“But we ain’t  _got_ school till September.”

“That doesn’t mean you can play in traffic. You might not get run over, but a little old bunny might squint at you angrily, and  _trust me,_ that’s a lot more terrifying than it sounds.   _Her_ mom squinted at me angrily once. I thought I was going to die.”  

Judy planted her face in her paw. The raccoon took a deep breath, steadied himself, and declared, “All I’m sayin’ is nobody can make me do anything. Not you, or the Sheriff, or stupid Miz March. Cos they ain’t my mama.”

“I’m big enough to eat you,” Nick offered. “Does that motivate you to go away?”

 _“Nick!”_ Judy waved her paws spastically. “No, don’t listen to him, honey, he’s not very good at telling jokes. Or being an adult.”

Solomon giggled, so Nick, at least, considered that a win. “Most grownups is dumb anyways. They make you sleep in a box and they only give you stupid old raisins and yell atchye – yell at you when you sneak food out, of, the trash.”

The way that Solomon was talking put Nick’s back up. He hoped the cub was only exaggerating, but you could never tell, and hope was for suckers. Judy’s gobsmacked expression turned into something fierce, but before either of them could say anything, the cub’s eyes darted back and forth and he backed away, tossing the hat at Judy. “Thank you, Ma’am, and...I gotta go! Bye!”

“No,” Nick said under his breath, before Judy even had a chance to  _suggest_ it. “We are not bringing him home with us.”

“I was only going to say we ought to bring it up with Westing. If there’s abuse going on in a host home, we need to stop it. And if there isn’t, at least we  _know.”_

“Yeah, a talk couldn’t hurt,” Nick replied, but his heart wasn’t really in it. In such a small town, everybody knew everyone’s business. He found it unlikely that Westing didn’t already know.

“Did you hear him, though? He’s training out his accent.” She gazed at the place Solomon had stood. “Give him a few years and he’ll sound just like me.”

“You still have an accent when you get mad,” he informed her.

She snorted and unlocked the door. “If you think  _I_ have an angry accent, you should hear Gideon Grey get into it with Olive Owens. My sister Amy tried to set them up, since they’re both from the other side of the mountains, but they get along about as well as oil and water. Probably why they’re engaged.”

Nick followed her inside, confused. “Why would anyone marry someone they hated?”

“Oh, it’s not like that. Olive would never be happy with someone she couldn’t argue with, and Gideon’s too smitten with her to consider  _not_ indulging her. Amy says she thinks they’re secretly competing to out-hick each other.”

“Every part of that is disturbing,” he said.

“At least they didn’t have to compare family trees to make sure they weren’t cousins,” she cracked, and well, she wasn’t  _wrong._

* * *

It was hard to pay attention to the faded floral wallpaper, the disgusting lime green tile in the kitchenette, the elegant decorative knot-work on the sturdy headboard, or the plush, newly-replaced carpet when he had a lapful of bunny clawing at him like a wild thing. She was quite a bit smaller than he was, so the whole thing was easier like this – sitting up against something, Judy setting the pace, the both of them mostly lost in sensation – but this time it was different. It felt less like a passionate connection and more like a  _holy hell,_ what was he thinking about again?

He felt her large front teeth dig into his collarbone again and surrendered. It didn’t matter. His ability to form a coherent thought would come back, or it wouldn’t, but all he cared about was the way she was moving with him.

Losing time wasn’t uncommon. Though he was usually very aware of himself and his surroundings, sex with Judy was...well, it was phenomenal, but it was also the only thing that could fully shut down his brain. By the time he came down, panting and messy (and vaguely terrified by the thought of how many loads of laundry they’d have to do per week if she kept it up like this), afternoon was already upon them. What time had she leapt into his arms? He had brought their luggage back from the hotel while she’d gone to the market, they’d put the turnovers in the oven, and then...what a hell of a day, anyway.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he said, licking along the shell of her ear as she rested against his chest, “but what brought that on?”

“Just you,” she murmured. Her words ruffled his fur and blew into the left side of his unbuttoned shirt, which they hadn’t even bothered to remove fully. “I saw you joke around with that kit, Solomon-”

“Cub,” he said. “Raccoons have cubs.”

 _“Whatever.”_ She reached up and scritched his scruff less gently than she usually did. “That cub, then. I don’t know, I don’t even want kits, but it was kind of hot, I guess. You can do it all.  _And_ you can sweet-talk anybody, but you chose me to spend your life with. Mary looked at me funny the whole time we were talking about peaches, because I was thinking about you. She probably thinks I have a food fetish.”

He snorted at the image of Judy rolling around in a pile of fruit and moaning in pleasure, but then he felt uncomfortably hot, and tried not to wonder what that said about him. He busied himself with the post-coital grooming he knew she liked, licking at the top of her head and dragging his claw-tips down her sides to work out the loose fur. Between licks, he asked, “Who’s Mary?”

“Mary Westing, the Sheriff’s wife. We have an invitation to their barbecue, by the way. I  _may_ have led her to believe that I eat chicken, so you’ll have to sneak it off my plate when they’re not looking. I just wanted to get an in with the cop wives. Trade a few stories and rumors. Get all the juicy gossip.”

The mental picture she painted – a pack of females gossipping in hushed tones about their law enforcement husbands – seemed so utterly  _unlike_ Judy that it stopped him mid-lick. She nudged under his chin to remind him to keep going, because of course she would. Nothing said “rabbit queen” like demanding attention. “Why do you want to meet them, exactly?”

She sighed. “Places like Meadowbrook run on gossip. I might not like playing the gossipy goose, but I did my homework earlier; being outsiders, that’s the best source of information we have.”

“We still don’t exactly know what we’re doing here,” he reminded her.

“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you because I was too turned on to focus. We’ve got wi-fi, but still no cell service; Horizon doesn’t go out this far, I guess. I got an email from Spottson just after you left to get our bags. He said we’re here to investigate the officers. Someone called in about police corruption, but IA has their paws full with that cluster-thump in District 13, so they want some proof before they use their limited resources to investigate.”

“That...doesn’t sound legitimate. At all.”

“I was thinking the same thing. It’s against protocol for sure, but honestly, Nick, Spottson’s not out to get us. He just hates us. There’s a difference.”

“So, what, we’re basically doing IA’s job so that they can come in and pretend they did their job?”

“It’s what he said.” She shrugged and nuzzled his chest. “Or maybe he’s hoping we’ll find out more about the Coates issue but he’s not authorized to order us to investigate. It could be a million things. Trust me, though, we’re going to need all our wits about us tomorrow.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere, Carrots, what’s the worst that can happen?”

She raised her head to look him in the eye, frowning. “This isn’t like Zootopia,  _Slick._ Here in the country, you can’t take anybody at their word. Half the time, they’re sweet as pie. The other half, the sweeter she is, the more she wants to rip your head off.”

“You still do that,” he told her thoughtfully. “I thought it was a  _you_ thing, though, not a country thing.”

Sometimes, when Judy was at her most polite, Nick could practically see the razors embedded in her words. It was the same kind of politeness she’d used on him when they’d first met, when she had cheerfully blackmailed him. Now that he thought about it, Bonnie did the same thing, though he’d never seen her in a situation that would require actual barbs. She just got overly sweet when Helga from the market made comments about Bonnie’s low number of grandkits.

_I do feel sorry for ya. Mine are all blessed with a few litters of their own. With your Judy playin’ hero up in Zootopia and half your warren seein’ the wrong sort of mammals, I worry about your farm, Bonnie, I really do._

_Oh, bless your heart, Helga, worrying about little old me! We’re doing just fine. With all the automation technology streamlining the process, it’s a good thing my kits are being a little more responsible about timing their litters! We Hoppses have a good sense for the way the wind blows._

“It’s passive-aggressive and stupid,” Judy continued, unaware of his dawning understanding, “but it’s the way things work. You don’t have to immerse yourself in it. In fact, you shouldn’t. I need your clever eyes on everybody. Just continue to be a darling city boy and I’ll get my paws dirty.”

“That’s...insidious,” he managed eventually.

“Why do you think I prefer Zootopia?”

He grinned and purposely gave her the wrong answer. “It’s obviously because of me. I’m in Zootopia. You would keel over and die without me.”

“How silly of me to think of myself as an individual,” she said with a coy giggle that sent the bad kind of shivers down his spine.

Yeah. Insidious.

Suddenly, his mind seized on her earlier words, and he frowned. “Wait, wait, you don’t want kits?  _You?”_

“No, I don’t, and if you make a joke about it I’ll shoot you,” she said defensively.

“Hey, I’m in the same boat here,” he assured her with a shrug. “I was just surprised. It’s not exactly something I’ve put much thought into; I don’t even know what we’d do with a kit, Carrots. We couldn’t take it to work, and we couldn’t give it to my  _mother.”_

“Yeah, I love Ruth, but she’d teach it to hustle as soon as it could walk. We’d send it to Bunnyburrow, obviously, where it would go nuts hating carrots and dirt. It would grow up and run away to Zootopia and we’d have to arrest it for shoplifting.”

“Ugh, our kit is such a degenerate,” he told her. “I blame you.”

“Good thing we don’t have one, or we’d never be able to do this in the living room,” she said, nipping a line up his chest and shifting in his lap.

He groaned, mostly in the good way, but also because she was goddamn insatiable and it was going to kill him one day. “Really? Again?”

“That’s the only upside to small towns,” she confided, shifting again. “There isn’t much else to do. You want me to stop?”

“Not on your life,” he told her, and his last coherent thought was something about time or work or something equally unimportant.

* * *

At six sharp, Nick and Judy surveyed the group of Meadowbrook officers. Nick, at least, was not particularly impressed, and he didn’t think Judy was, either. Aside from Rose, Stripely, and Westing, there were also three other officers: a caribou who claimed her name was Scarlett O’Hare (if this was true, Nick would eat his own claws), a deer named Doethan Velvet, and a fragile-looking ram named Patrick Black. They looked like a ragtag bunch, with most of the officers trying to stand taller than they were and O’Hare scowling like Nick and Judy had done something to  _animally_ offend her.

“Y’all, this is Lieutenant Judy Hopps and Officer Nick Wilde,” said Westing, gesturing vaguely.

“Detective,” Judy corrected with a lazy smile. “That’s  _Detective_ Nick Wilde. Small detail, I know, but we’re pretty proud of it. Now, we don’t want to step on anyone’s feet here, but we’re investigating something important. None of you are in trouble, all right? We just want to get to the bottom of our own case.”

That was  _Nick’s_ lazy smile, and it was nice to see it across her muzzle. She had taught him so much; he was glad that she’d learned a few things in return.

Velvet leaned over to Stripely and asked in a stage whisper, “What’s with Nancy Shrew? Are we  _actually_ supposed ta believe-”

“You shut ya grass-chompin’ mouth right now, Doe,” Stripely said harshly. “Case you forget,  _you_ was Mal’s best friend around here.”

Velvet glowered, but said nothing.

“Anyway,” Judy continued, as though she hadn’t heard a thing, “Chief Spottson’s up my tailpipe about making sure everything’s working around here. I’ve seen a few issues already, but again, none of you are in trouble. You don’t want outsiders nosin’ around in your business, and we don’t want Spottson to send more outsiders to make this whole thing worse. If you can work with us, we can take a nice, shiny report back to Zootopia and get out of your fur for good. Can y’all do that for me?”

“Yessum,” said Stripely immediately. Rose gave a quiet  _yes_ and the other officers just sort of shuffled, waiting for someone else to break.

“I want to hear your voices clear as bells,” she barked.  _“Can you work with us?”_

More shifting. Finally, O’Hare said reluctantly, “Yessum,” and the rest followed in quiet disdain. Judy smiled, as though they hadn’t completely dismissed and disrespected her. Either she hadn’t noticed – unlikely; she was sensitive to that sort of thing – or she’d decided she’d take it over the unpleasant task of establishing dominance.

Nick took some of the pressure off with a very sharp, threatening grin and added, “We want us gone as much as you do.  _I’ve_ found it best to just go along with my  _superiors._ They don’t tend to lead us astray.”

“Yes, thank you, Detective, for your commentary,” Judy said, rolling her eyes. “First things first: this station doesn’t close at six anymore. It doesn’t close  _at all._ I understand how it is in a town like this; back in Bunnyburrow, the only time we needed the station at all was for lost kits and sometimes the drunk tank. Still, ya gotta plan for emergencies. Westing will come up with a good rotation schedule, won’t you, Sheriff?”

Westing looked startled to be addressed, having probably assumed Judy was just going to run the show until they left. One thing Nick loved about Judy, though, was that for all her bossiness and ability to bully anyone into anything with a few kind words (or blackmail, and sometimes those were the same thing), she rarely left anyone feeling like they were only around to observe. She delegated tasks and made mammals feel useful, even when they weren’t. Nick had noticed Bonnie doing the same thing around the farm, allowing the kits to shell peas in preparation for dinner and ignoring the way most of the peas would be gone by the time the task was done, or giving little Alec a toy broom so he could ‘help’ sweep the burrow.

“I sure will, Lieutenant Hopps,” Westing promised.

“Good. In the meantime, I want to see how you’re treating your firearms.” Nick looked at her sideways. What did firearms have to do with anything? With such a low crime rate, they probably didn’t have many. “Would one of you show me the way?”

“I’ll a-come with ya, Miz Judy,” said Rose. Stripely gave him the stink-eye.

“Why, thank you, Rose,” she said sweetly, before adding, “I want the rest of you to get organized so that I can see your filing system when I’m done. If you’re quick about it, we can get out of here by eight.”

“Yessum,” said Stripely. There was a faint echo from the other officers. Nick hoped Stripely wouldn’t become a problem; he didn’t think the badger was Judy’s type, but he seemed...a little too eager to get on her good side.

Nick followed Rose and Judy to the back of the station and through a steel-reinforced door. The contents made Nick let out a whistle that was, actually, mostly involuntary. “Holy gunpowder, Batbear.”

The guns were  _countless._ Nick didn’t even know the names of most of them, though he was sure Judy could rattle them off without hesitation and was probably having a tiny mental orgasm at the sight. There were even some guns that were sized for mammals that didn’t even work for the Meadowbrook police. A quick look down at his partner confirmed that Judy was, indeed, mesmerized.

“Your stock is bigger than ours,” she marveled. “Wow!”

“Yeah, Spottson keeps a-sendin’ ‘em here. No idea why,” replied Rose, and Nick remembered that before becoming the Chief of Police, Spottson had been in charge of some administrative program that controlled what resources went to what locations. Why had he sent so many guns  _here?_ “He barks orders and expects everyone ta kiss the ground he walk on.”

“Spottson.” She snorted. “He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow. And he’d probably try to make friendly with a cottonmouth just to show how tough he is.”

“Damn straight,” said Rose, grinning. “He’s about as sharp as a ball peen hammer, but he’s a right mean bastard. Best shot I ever seen. You do much shootin’ in the city?”

“I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn,” said Judy, which was a lie if Nick ever heard one. Judy was the kind of accurate that gave him the shivers. She was the kind of accurate that gave Nick’s old contacts sympathetic shivers. “Guns are just too awkward for me. I do all right with tranqs, though, and that’s mostly what we use up there in Zootopia. I just have a head for gun trivia, bein’ from Bunnyburrow and all.”

And with that, she busied herself with a careful inspection of each gun. Nick left her to it, leaning against the doorframe and keeping an eye on Rose.

As far as ocelots went, Rose was big. He probably had two inches on Nick, and that was at a slouch. His muscle mass was intimidating and embarrassing in contrast to Nick’s own (lesser) build. Actually, now that Nick got a slow look at him, if anyone might become competition, it would be Rose; he was dramatically attractive, with a thick, well-groomed coat and a striking pattern. He towered over Judy, but he was still about chest-height to Westing, and since Judy’s dating history suggested she had a bit of a thing for taller, sharp-edged animals…

No, that was dumb, and Nick felt dumb just for considering it. Judy wouldn't leave her life in Zootopia for some hick in Meadowbrook.

In truth, Nick had been surprised to see small mammals on the force even in Meadowbrook, but now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure why. In a little town where the majority of the population was rabbit-sized, it made no sense to have a team made up of large mammals. Bunnyburrow’s sheriff was a sleek jaguar who seemed to have gathered up every single young predator (except Gideon Grey) to keep a rough sort of peace, but then, officers out in the sticks didn’t necessarily have to go through the academy. The ones who didn’t weren’t  _actually_ officers. They were called “constables” and weren’t allowed to have official ranks, though informally they had a hierarchy just like the one officially used by police departments all over Animalia.

It didn’t make any sense, but neither did Judy being the first bunny cop when places like Bunnyburrow and Meadowbrook existed.

“So what’s your first name, Rose,” asked Nick, only mildly curious. Mostly, he wanted to distract the ocelot from Judy’s methodical search, or whatever it was she was doing. Her familiarity with each firearm would look a little weird to someone who thought she couldn’t shoot, and although Nick couldn’t imagine  _why_ she wanted Rose to think that, he’d long ago decided that sometimes the best way to handle Judy was just to roll with the crazy and ask questions later.

“Uh, it’s...uh…” Rose looked away, scratching at his left ear. “It’s Axel.”

Nick’s mouth lifted in what would probably soon become a vicious smile if he didn’t get a handle on it quick. “No.”

“Afraid it is.”

 _“No,”_ he said again, tamping down the strong urge to laugh. “That’s not real.”

“Born in 1987. My daddy was...is there a louder word for  _obsessed?”_

“Fervid, maybe,” he suggested. “Is it A-X-L?”

Rose shook his head. “Naw, my mama had enough sense to spell it like ‘at Jules Furne character.”

 _“Please_ tell me she called you “sweet child o’ mine” at least  _once_ in your life.”

“Alla time,” groaned Rose, pulling on his ears as though they might be able to hide his face. His ears may have been handsome, but they were small; even Nick’s ears weren’t large enough to cover him like Judy’s could. “An’ so did  _everbody else.”_

“Don’t worry,” Nick told him, clapping him on the shoulder. He wasn’t exactly  _used_ to offering comfort to anyone other than Judy, and occasionally Clawhauser when dates went poorly, but he knew that kind of misery. He’d lived it. “My middle name’s Piberius. When  _that_ got out, it took months to get everyone to stop calling me Captain Birch.”

He didn’t mention that it had only “gotten out” because Judy had used it in front of everyone at the station, or that he  _still_ got a few snipes every now and then. Especially from Wolford, who thought of Judy as something of a spiritual sister, and still didn’t quite approve of their relationship. It was a struggle not to poke fun of the stragglers for being nerds, but he didn’t want to poke fun of his dad...and it wasn’t like he hadn’t watched every single episode of Star Trunk once Webflix had become a thing.

“Captain Birch...that un’s from Star Claws, ain’t it?”

Nick groaned. It was going to be a  _long_ three weeks.

* * *

After a surprisingly quick inspection – they’d learned that under the mysterious “Mal,” the paperwork system had become both efficient and mind-numbingly detailed – Judy dismissed all but O’Hare and Velvet, who were to switch off minding the station. Nick trailed out behind her, considering everything they’d learned.

One: the force was small, but they had lots of resources and a good system. If there was some kind of corruption, everyone was in on it.

Two: they did not trust outsiders, although they were more willing to accept Judy as a fellow country gal.

Three: Rose was tolerable, and if Nick could push past his dislike for the flirting, so was Stripely. Westing was decent as well, but he seemed like a bit of a pushover.

Four: Judy was a  _menace_ who was playing a new game he’d never seen before. Nick knew all the cons in the book. That meant that either Judy wasn’t running a con, or she had modified one and the end wouldn’t come up until later. Either way, he wanted to know what her angle was.

“Did you see their  _armory,”_ she gushed before he had a chance to ask.

“Yes,” he intoned, amused.

“No, did you  _see?_ They got their paws on a .300 Savage  _and_ a Bearetta M9  _sized for small mammals!_ Oh, Nick!”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, you want to ditch me, marry the armory, and stay here forever. You’ll have adorable little bullet kits whose ears flap in the wind when you shoot them out of –  _ow._ You don’t have to yank my tail.”

“Stop being weird then. You won’t get rid of me that easily,” she retorted. “Sorry, I just...we don’t get a lot of time to shoot real guns in the city, except for at the shooting range, and there’s not much variety.”

“And you still won’t get to, because you told November Rain you can’t shoot a gun.” Seizing the opportunity to bring the conversation around, he asked, “Why is that, again?”

“Because I need an excuse to get close to O’Hare. She doesn’t like me, but if I tell her I need more practice shooting a gun and ask her to teach me, she’ll lord it over me. I don’t mind playing incompetent if it helps get us what we want. You taught me that.”

He grinned and reached down to take her paw, just because she was awesome. “Why do you like guns so much, anyway? Isn’t that a little...abnormal, for a bunny?”

“Maybe in the city, but I grew up in Bunnyburrow.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

She laughed, as though he’d said something genuinely funny. He couldn’t see any humor yet. “It’s the country, Slick, we learn to shoot as soon as we’re strong enough to hold a gun.”

He grimaced. “What do you even shoot, anyway? Air? Clay pigeons? ...Fox cutouts?”

“Snakes, mostly. They’ll eat us if we don't get ‘em. Some of the venomous lizards are big enough to be a danger, too.”

“But.” Nick felt queasy. “But what do you do with the  _bodies?”_

“You ever eat snake sausage?” He shook his head and she grinned. “Me neither, but snake meat’s valuable for trade, and I have it on good authority it’s delicious. Next time we’re in Bunnyburrow I’ll go out and shoot your dinner.”

“I knew it,” he grumbled. “You're a big scary predator at heart.”

“You know I’m a vegan by design.”

“Didn't stop you from hunting  _me.”_

She grinned lasciviously. “I did make an exception for yummy fox, didn't I? Mmf.”

Why were the little noises she made so enticing? Why was  _she_ so enticing? It didn’t seem fair that every little bit of her was beautiful, from her toes to the tips of her ears. He’d seen lots of bunnies, but none compared to her. In fact, no mammal compared to her. He was used to being the prettiest thing in the room at any given moment, but she far outstripped him.

At least he still had his silver tongue. She seemed to like that enough to stick with him.

“Did you hammer out the details with Westing?”

“Yeah, I think we covered – oh,  _darn it._ I forgot to talk to him about Solomon,” she answered, squeezing his paw. The adorable consternation on her face made his heart swell.

“We’ll do that tomorrow,” he promised. “What do you want to do with the rest of the night?”

“I was thinking maybe we’d just go back to the suite. We’ll get unpacked, I’ll walk on your back, you’ll-”

“Sold.” Her suggestion put a bit of pep back into his step. Nick had experienced plenty of different massages over the years, but nothing could compare to the feeling of Judy’s entire weight on his muscles, distributed perfectly throughout her long feet. Sometimes she even indulged him and walked on his legs, too. Usually he came out of the experience feeling more than a little buzz of pain along his joints, but along with the pain came a giddy sensation of being ten years younger. It also made the sex a little more intense, but that was something he didn’t really want to get out, because Judy would be  _merciless_ in her teasing.

* * *

He had only once seen Judy wear a dress. It had been for some kind of function where rich bastards and politicians drank high-priced alcohol and jerked each other off, and Nick and Judy had been ordered to make an appearance. The night had ended horribly, with Nick getting thrown through a window, dragged through a puddle, and finally tossed into a rosebush; he’d been forced to the ER with fuzzy thoughts and plenty of cuts, but he remembered how the overall effect of her gray fur against the deep blue silk had been less “look, a bunny in a dress” and more “look, a goddess lost her mind and decided to slum it with the mortals for the night.”

This dress was not that dress, but it sort of made him pant anyway. It was a brilliant green thing that hugged her torso and hung loosely around her calves, giving her a good range of motion without being overly revealing or getting in the way. The knit black shawl across her shoulders lessened the effect, and only Nick would be able to tell that she was uncomfortable in the ensemble; she certainly looked at home in it, but he knew her tells by now.

He also knew without a doubt that she had on knee-length leggings and a tank top underneath.

“I don’t look  _that_ weird, do I,” she asked him, shifting self-consciously. “I just want to fit in tonight.”

They were headed to the barbecue at Westing’s place. They had opted to stay at the station all day to watch the comings and goings of the officers and get a feel for the inner workings. Nick hadn’t seen any glitches thus far, but they had offered to do a foot patrol the next day so that they could get in a few covert questions while meeting the locals. There was something funny about the whole situation, and they couldn’t get in touch with Spottson. They had even considered pulling out to get some clarity muzzle-to-muzzle, but what could happen in a small town like Meadowbrook? A drunken brawl between rabbits seemed tame compared to the mob violence and domestic terrorism they’d encountered in Zootopia.

“No, you look...you look  _amazing,”_ he told her, swallowing. Or, well, trying to. His mouth was oddly dry just from the sight of her.

“I chose it because it matches your eyes,” she confessed. “Not exactly subtle, I know, but-”

“Not exactly  _subtle?_ Carrots, you’re showing me what you’ll look like in your  _wedding dress.”_

She gave him a confused look and tugged on the side of her dress. “Wedding dresses are light blue.”

“No, they...the bride wears a dress that matches the groom’s eyes, and the groom’s shirt matches the bride’s eyes.”

“This must be one of those cultural things we forgot to talk about.” She looked him up and down. “Either way, I’m not buying a wedding dress. The expense is exorbitant for something I’ll wear one time – to the  _courthouse –_ and then probably get too skinny to wear again.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah, it’s tradition for the bride to put on a little weight and the bridesmaids to lose a little just before the wedding, so all the pictures will give the bride that “pleasantly plump” look. It’s silly, and I don’t want to do it. Better to not bother with wedding aesthetics.”

“No, not that,” he said, although – to be honest – he  _did_ want to see what she meant by “pleasantly plump,” because he thought it probably would be pleasant. “You’re not getting a dress?”

“Like I said, it’d be too expensive. I think my sister has a skirt suit that’ll  _probably_ fit me, though, if looks are that important to you.”

“No, they’re not  _important,_ I just assumed they’d...be there.” He shrugged. “If you don’t want to wear a dress, don’t. I just, you know, grew up hearing females talk about their perfect weddings. Even  _Francine_ had wedding fever for a while, do you remember? I didn’t realize you weren’t interested, although now that I think about it, I can’t remember you ever mentioning the logistics of it aside from picking a day to go to the courthouse.”

“I grew up planning my perfect career,” she said, grinning and thrusting a paper bag into his paw. He knew it was full of the blueberry turnovers they’d made before their afternoon in bed, and he fully expected to eat half of them before the night was up. “To be honest, I never even considered getting married in the first place. It seemed extraneous. Blah blah blah, adding stress, worrying about safe sex with someone who probably wanted kits, finding someone who didn’t think of me as Jude the Dude; marriage sounded more like a chore than a fun goal. Until you.”

“You think being married to me will be  _fun?”_

She rolled her eyes and tugged him toward the door by his beltloop. “I think we’re basically already married right now, only without an official document, and our lives are plenty fun.”

Somewhere inside, he knew that most males would take issue with a tiny bunny leading them around like Judy did; he’d even gotten flak for it from other predators who thought she was taking advantage of him. Nick enjoyed watching her take charge, though, even if she was taking charge of him. She was in her element, whether she was directing traffic or directing lives. He was very much done with living his life according to public opinion, anyway, so it didn’t matter what anyone else thought.

“Careful there, Carrots. My pants are delicate,” he said, allowing her to tug him straight out the door. She locked the door and tucked the key into her clutch. He hadn’t even known she  _owned_ one, and he’d bet his next paycheck she didn’t know what it was called. While Nick had failed to make a killing selling paw-made knockoffs, she’d been avoiding dates and bulking up. “By the way, when did you get your...bag?”

“Why, do you like it? Thinking of getting one for yourself?”

“You know me, always the height of fashion,” he replied, thinking of his Tommy Bapawma shirts, which Judy said looked tacky. She was wrong, but it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how clothes worked. He’d had to explain the difference between flounce sleeves and trumpet sleeves the first time she’d gone on a date during their partnership on the force. “But no, I already have several left over from an old job. I just didn’t realize  _you_ had one.”

She waved it around and began walking down Main Street, which Nick was beginning to suspect was the only street worth remembering. “It came with the shawl. That’s why they match. I guess it is pretty useful, though I still think a tool belt is the way to go. I could barely fit my pawcuffs in here and I had to leave my phone in the suite to fit them.”

He rested his forehead in his paw, mostly for effect, but there was some genuine despair in there. “Fluff,  _why_ would you bring your pawcuffs to a barbecue?”

“Because I’m a good little Bunny Scout who’s always prepared,” she shot back. “Don’t judge my life choices. One day these pawcuffs will save us, and you’ll be sorry for having doubted me.”

“This is the face of non-judgment. I’m certain you’ll need them tonight,” he lied. He was totally judging her for that one. Now, a  _tranq,_ he could see being useful. Even a taser would be better, and it would take up less room. But cuffs were unlikely to serve any kind of purpose.

“Maybe I’m planning on cuffing you to a fence and letting the snakes get you,” she said, so seriously he wasn’t sure she was joking.

“That’s not a thing mammals do in the country...right?”

“No, it’s not.” She reached up and took his elbow, leaning against his upper arm as they walked toward the Sheriff’s house. “I would never.”

He had been a bad influence on her, for sure, but sometimes Nick wondered if the reason she was so good at trolling nowadays was less because he’d rubbed off on her and more because she felt like she could show her nasty side. Every time he caught himself thinking of how soft and sweet she was, he remembered that they wouldn’t be engaged now had she not guiltlessly blackmailed him into risking his life. Every time he felt grateful that she had apologized to him and come back to him, he remembered that she’d been the one to suggest taking Weaselton to Mr. Big. And in the Natural History Museum, they’d been on the same wavelength; she’d taken apart the gun and he’d lined up the blueberries in the cartridge, and neither had said a thing.

Their whole partnership was like that. Nick was wily and lived up to the nickname she’d given him, and usually that was enough for their fellow officers; everyone assumed that when they tricked criminals into giving up, confessing, or doing something stupid to incriminate themselves, it was Nick’s doing, and Judy seemed happy enough to keep them thinking that. But she was nearly as tricky as he, and far less likely to think of the long-term damage her tricks could do.

It was a good thing she wasn't a criminal. Nick was sure she’d be running the underworld within a year.

Some had described their relationship as “opposites attract,” but they were too similar to be opposites. Their differences balanced each other out, though, and their partnership elevated them both. Since he’d joined the force, Nick had felt as though he wasn’t just living in the world, he was building something. Were it not for Judy, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to build a legacy doing work that he was genuinely good at. For that alone, he would give her the world if he could.

“You have that silly look again,” she told him, bumping him with her generous hip.

He shrugged, licking the tip of her ear just to watch the ensuing happy shudder. “I’m thinking about everything that makes us such a good team. My amazing looks, your disproportionate strength and frankly physics-defying physical abilities, our stylish crime-solving, the way we almost equal a whole wolf when you’re sitting on my shoulders…”

“My ears count,” she said helpfully.

“All right, the way we  _do_ equal a whole wolf when you’re sitting on my shoulders. You gotta admit, Carrots, we’re great.”

“Course we’re great. It’s you and me. I'm great, you're great, so together we’re basically an explosion of awesome.”

Nick paused. She naturally came to a halt. “Nick?”

He leaned over to murmur into her ear, “Sometimes you say things that make me want to whisk you away somewhere private and keep you in bed for days.”

“Just a few more weeks,” she whispered back. “A few more weeks and we’ll be in Hanapepe on our honeymoon. We’ll be lazy beach bums on the days we manage to make it out of bed at all.”

“I still think we should go to Kihei instead, Carrots. There are  _aliens_ in Hanapepe.”

She snorted and began walking again. “Everybody goes to Maui, and there are no aliens, Nick, it was just a story in the tabloids.”

“You’ll be sorry when some weird-looking creature ray-guns the bridge  _while we’re on it.”_

“We’ll save each other from the aliens too, then. I’ll burrow under them and trap them in the ground. And you’ll use your superior height to...I don’t know, how do you fight aliens, anyway?”

“Realistically? You don’t. Just assume crash position and hope they’re friendly.”

“You know what, no wonder you’re scared of country folk. We’re arguably weirder than aliens,” she teased. “Okay, look, here’s Westing’s place. Put on your best smile and pretend you fit in. I know you can do that; you’ve been doing it since you were a kit. I’m sure we’re not walking into any sort of trap, but stay ready to pounce. Also, try not to flirt with anybody there. They’re mostly married, and we don’t want to  _alienate_ anybody.”

Nick didn’t know whether to address her terrible joke, the flirting thing, or the “pretending to fit in” comment (he fit in everywhere; it was his superpower), so he just babbled a little. “I’m not scared of you.”

“Of course not.” She reached up and fiddled with his tie. “I’m completely nonthreatening. Nothing to see here, just a sweet little bunny taking her handsome fox to a barbecue, where he definitely won’t get roasted alive and distributed amongst the guests.”

“It’s things like this that make me wonder why I agreed to marry you,” he said lightly, but privately, he promised to keep a weather eye out for anyone with a pistol. Or a pitchfork.

“Oh, Judy,” said a female wolf once they pushed through the garden gate. It was probably Mary Westing. “So glad you found the place.”

Why wouldn’t they find the place? There weren’t enough houses in the town proper to get lost.

“Good to see you, Mary,” said Judy, turning up the charm. She gestured to Nick. “This is Nick, my partner and fiancé. We brought turnovers. Give ‘em over, Nick, honey.”

He obliged, handing the paper bag to Mary, who cooed a little. “You shouldn’t have. I know y’all just got into town.”

“Oh, we couldn’t possibly show up without a gift for our hostess,” he put in, nudging Judy gently. “We weren’t sure what would be good for a barbecue – not really something that happens a lot in Zootopia – but everybody loves turnovers, right?”

“Anyone with half a brain,” Mary agreed, ushering them forward and depositing the bag on a short table full of snacks. “You want some tea, Judy? Nick?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Judy.

“What kind is it,” asked Nick, who usually liked fruit teas well enough. Chamomile made him sneeze, though, and the less said about black tea, the better.

Mary exchanged a sorrowful look with Judy before commenting, “Bless ya heart, you really is a city boy, ain’t you? It’s  _tea.”_

“The only kind of tea worth drinking,” Judy explained, rubbing his paw, probably expecting him to be annoyed by the condescension. It  _was_ annoying, but only because he felt like he was the punchline to a great joke he hadn’t heard yet. “It’s red – sorry,  _black_ tea leaves, steeped just right, with a simple syrup mixed in. You cool it and serve it with ice and lemon. I think the Meadowbrook variation actually mixes the lemon juice in with the syrup, right?”

“We sure does. Some folk think it’s blasphemy, but they just ain’t tried it yet,” Mary confirmed.

“I’d better pass,” he said weakly. Lemons  _and_ black tea? What kind of crazy animals put those together? And how on Earth could anybody drink cold tea?

“Nick’s got a lemon allergy,” Judy said by way of explanation. It wasn’t true – he just hated them – but it was probably politer to say he was allergic than to say lemons were disgusting. “Poor dear.”

“Y’all must be...progressive, up there in the city,” said Mary, turning her back to fix Judy some “tea.” Nick caught Judy literally biting her tongue and tried not to grin  _too_ hard. “Mind you, I got no problem with queer folk, but it ain’t exactly common to see animals like you so...unashamed.”

“Anyone can be anything in Zootopia,” Judy said, using that coy tone that deeply unsettled him. “I was the first bunny cop; Nick was the first fox. Seemed pretty logical for us to keep on doin’ what other folks don’t do. Nothin’ ever came of bein’ scared.”

Nick privately disagreed with that. There was a lot of value in fear. For example, fearing Mr. Big had kept him alive for  _years,_ and fearing jail had taught him a lot about laws (and loopholes). Fearing death had kept him from being as reckless as his partner in the field. Fearing losing her had pushed him into telling her he wanted to kiss her. In fact, fear of blackmail had kept him close to her in the beginning, so really, it could be argued that fear was the reason they were in Meadowbrook at all.

Not that Meadowbrook was a great place to be, but at least he was a relatively honest mammal with a good job and an amazing partner. Every officer had to do unpleasant things now and again.

“Well, hello,” said another voice. Nick sniffed but couldn’t discern the scent, so it wasn’t another canid and it wasn’t anyone he’d met already. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that it was a female badger. “You must be Lieutenant Hopps. Harry told me all aboutcha. He’s  _real_ pleased ta meet the famous bunny solved a terrist case.”

Her tone told Nick that, while Stripely had been pleased, this badger was  _not._ Nick wondered if this was his wife, but he didn’t smell any contact. Judy turned and smiled a large, warm smile. “Yes, I’m Lieutenant Hopps. You can call me Judy, though.”

“Judy, then. My name’s Lynette Stripely. Harry’s wife.” She looked Judy up and down, a pale smile fixed across her muzzle. “You ain’t the average bunny, I see.”

“Oh, I’d say I’m pretty average,” Judy countered. Another blatant lie, although this time Nick was sure she believed it. Her enthusiasm for hard work, and her propensity to think the best of mammals, gave her a curious combination of humility and hilarious egotism. “I just decided I wanted to make the world a better place, is all.”

“I see.” Stripely’s lip curled. “Judy, why don’t you come along an’ meet the rest of us? If ya think you’ll be here a while, you might as well have a few friends.”

“I’d love to, Lynette, thank you!”

Nick watched as Judy let herself be hustled away by a badger who clearly disliked her. He turned back to Mary, who gave him a conspiratorial look. “She best know how ta handle herself. Lynnie’s a right nuisance, given half a chance.”

“I may not know everything about her,” Nick replied, “but trust me on this: she’s the most capable animal I’ve ever met.”

Then Rose found him, took his elbow, and half-dragged him over to the veranda, where the officers on the force – sans O’Hare, who was standing glumly at the outskirts of the knot of females surrounding a smiling Judy – were sitting in a rough circle, sipping what smelled like beer. Gross. Nick preferred sunflower ale, but then, he’d been a bit of a hedonist since he’d made enough money to spend it on luxuries. Sunflower seeds were largely a prey item, and occasionally eaten by small- to mid-sized omnivores who didn’t want to get their protein from bugs, but one enterprising company had decided to sell honey ale made with sunflower malt.

“Look, it’s  _Detective_ Wilde,” said Velvet with a grin. It was Stripely’s turn to watch the station, along with Black, but if his nose was accurate, their partners (spouses?) were both present.

“That’s me,” Nick agreed. “The great fox detective.”

“Lemme guess, you ain’t a drinker,” said Rose, sizing up Nick.

“Not usually, no. How’d you guess?”

“You seem like the type ta be in control alla time,” the ocelot answered, shrugging. “More for us. But if you feel like a beer…”

Nick tried not to smirk. Rose’s assessment was spot-on, at least most of the time, but Nick knew Judy had a hidden weird side, and one of these days he was going to ask to indulge it. He could think of a couple of  _alternate_ uses for their standard-issue pawcuffs that were definitely not sanctioned.

Why was he thinking about her so much? He couldn't remember being so consumed back in Zootopia. Meadowbrook was doing weird things to his focus.

“Tell me, fellas,” he said, deciding to side-step the problem by working, “what does a mammal do for fun around here?”

* * *

They hadn't done foot patrols in at least a year, and Nick had forgotten how much he liked them. It was a weird thing for a small mammal to like, but Nick was a social creature; he thrived on making connections and talking to individuals. It was what had made him a decent hustler. It was what made him a decent cop, too. He and Judy were good detectives, but it was a different application of skill.

The first place they went was also the most crowded place: the market. It was more of a cluster of stands in the middle of what old-timey books would call a  _town square,_ and most of the vendors sold products they had grown. A rabbit scolded a smaller rabbit for stealing a carrot from the stall, and mammals smiled at each other.

It was altogether too cheerful for Nick to handle.

“I prefer the market in Zootopia,” he confided to Judy, his voice as low a murmur as he could manage. Bunnies had excellent hearing, but they couldn’t always filter the noise; he was counting on the hum of voices and movement to hide his words. “This cheer is getting under my fur.”

She nudged him in the side. Nick had never noticed before, having avoided most unnecessary physical contact until Judy, but so much could be said in a gesture. Her gentle touch was soothing. She was right there, beside him, and always would be. “They’re not all happy. It’s just a thing everyone does. Smiles are a way of life. You really ought to be at home here.”

“True enough,” he replied quietly. It stung. One of Judy’s least-endearing qualities was her tendency to speak thoughtlessly, but without it, he wouldn’t have grown as much as he had. She said what he needed to hear, even if it was hard to hear or inconvenient. Sometimes she was wrong, but in this case, she wasn't.

Perhaps he had more in common with Meadowbrook citizens than he’d originally assumed.

“Oh, hi, Evelyn,” Judy said to the rabbit selling bottled goods. “Penny’s not here this morning?”

“I got her on the auto till this mornin,” Evelyn told them.

“You have an auto till? We haven't been able to get one of those on our farm!”

“Yeah, it was an investment, but the warren’s shrinkin’. Back inny old days, we had  _options,_ but nowadays, with allat gay and intaspecies marriage bein’  _legal..._ well, things ain’t the way they used ta be. Never knowed I had so many deviants in my own home till they was allowed ta go public with it.” Evelyn sneered. “I ain’t got room in my warren for that kinda sinnin’. Automation’s what’s savin’ the farm.”

Nick blanked his face and braced himself for Hurricane Hopps. He didn’t know what the dominant religion in Meadowbrook was, but considering the talk of the Yule Owl from the day previous and the notion of ‘sin,’ he assumed it was one of the few religions that worshiped actual deities. He hadn’t known there were believers who did more than pay lip service to their gods anyway, except for Mr. Big and his associates, who used the sign of the compass but never really talked about the God of the North.

Judy, predictably, wasn’t having any of it. “Evelyn, do you mean to tell me that you cut your own warren?”

Evelyn looked highly offended. “My kits is always welcome ta come home, once they seen sense. I’d never cut my warren. We just don’t tolerate sinnin’ under our roof. My, Officer, is it so bad up in the city that you don’t even flinch no more?”

“I was raised by lizards,” Judy said with a charming smile. “I gotta say, Evelyn, you’re the last bunny I expected to see kicking kits out the door, considering all the competition. We farmers are a dyin’ breed, now that folks all over Animalia can get their paws on a little tech and make their own hydroponic greenhouses.”

“Hydroponic – ya can’t never replace real earth-grown food,” Evelyn retorted.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” Judy’s smile turned vicious. “Nick and I’ve had success with our own little setup in our house. We’re hoping to get it all runnin’ smoothly before July so our neighbors only have to tend the plants while we’re on our honeymoon.”

He tried not to laugh, and only managed to tone it down to a grin. If they had a house, that was news to him, and hydroponic gardens were not very common at all in Zootopia. Of course, none of what Judy had said was factually  _false._ Many animals thought of ‘house’ and ‘home’ as interchangeable words. Anyone in Animalia  _could_ set up their own hydroponic garden, and he and Judy  _did_ have plants that needed to be watered. That they were tiny herbs in a planter was inconsequential in the face of shocking Evelyn, though, and Nick was irrationally proud of Judy.

“You? You’s one of  _them?”_

“Yes, I’d say I’m a Zootopian, now that I’ve lived there for a long while,” Judy replied, purposely missing the point. Or maybe not so purposely. She may have been clever, but she sometimes truly didn’t see what was dancing naked in front of her. She hadn’t even noticed that the sight of her made him literally pant until her friend had pointed it out. “You’ll have to come and visit sometime. It’s truly a beautiful city.”

“I...I’ll think about it,” said Evelyn, face pinched and voice tight. “It’s kind of you ta offer.”

“We’ll take a bottle of peaches,” said Nick, pretending he hadn’t noticed the mean exchange.

“Eight-fifty.” Evelyn pushed a glass jar toward him, but didn’t actually hand it to him. Whether it was because he was a fox or because he was a deviant he couldn’t tell, which – in some respects – was a nice change of pace, but there was only so much a tod could take without his smile becoming fixed and distinctly insincere.

“Yeah, thanks,” he told her, placing a ten on the stand’s smooth wood counter. “Keep the change. C’mon, Carrots, let’s go do our jobs.  _Serve and protect.”_

“I ought to protect her from  _herself,”_ Judy muttered darkly, but took his offered arm nonetheless.

They meandered through the stalls. Nick made a careful note of the mammals Judy knew and called by name as they passed; he would need names and faces if he wanted to make inroads with the locals, and although he wasn’t sure it was necessary, he wanted to cover his bases. Something – and he wasn’t sure  _what –_ felt off. Nick’s hustler sense was tingling, and whenever that happened, he and Judy inevitably found themselves in a sticky situation.

(Judy said his hustler sense wasn’t real, and that he was just paranoid from living on the streets so long, but history said otherwise. Their very first case had uncovered a terrorist conspiracy, their very first official kitnapping had uncovered a child trafficking ring, and their very first – and only – zoicide had uncovered a deranged serial cannibal. At his most optimistic, Nick just expected everyone to randomly start coming at him with knives. And look, he was alive, so take  _that,_ Carrots.)

* * *

“Styyyyyep right up,” called a voice with a familiar cadence that gave Nick unreasonable flashbacks to childhood. He followed the cant of Judy’s ears to a rickety upturned crate tucked into the corner of the marketplace. Ten minutes prior, he and Judy had been abruptly informed by an irritated O’Hare that they’d come just in time for the Storm Festival – because apparently country folks were crazy and liked to celebrate bad weather – and although it wasn’t as large or packed as the Bunnyburrow Carrot Days festival, the town was full to the brim with the rabbits who, thus far, had been content to hide out on their farm(s?). “Come an’ test ya powers of observation! You think ya smart? You think you can beat the Kid? Come an’ find the Lady!”

“Oh, awesome,” said Judy, a fond smile on her face. Nick found this odd, because she  _had_ to have known this was one of the oldest scams in the book.

...Right?

“Let’s go see it, Nick,” she told him, tugging on his beltloop. Technically, they were still on patrol, but there was a mob forming, and if nothing else, at least they could watch some idiots get suckered. No, wrong. They could shut down a scam. Yes. No matter how entertaining it was, they couldn’t just stand by and let...a child…

Solomon was standing in front of the crate, concentrating as he tossed cards to and fro. The speaker, a rabbit who was probably eleven or twelve, was grinning at the pattern of cards. A goat just a little younger was standing catty-corner to Solomon, frowning and pretending to watch intently. Nick knew that it didn’t matter whether she watched or not; Solomon would let her know which one to pick. Sure enough, the goat pointed out the Queen of Hearts.

“And the Kid wins again,” said the bunny cheerily.  _The Kid._ How...well, okay, it was catchy enough. “I never seen nobody as attentionive to details! Who amongst  _you_ could measure up?”

With a sense of nostalgia and a vague sense of shame, Nick watched a couple of different marks –  _patrons –_ try and fail to beat Solomon’s sleight of paw. It was almost sad. Nobody was that gullible, right?

“We should probably break this up,” he said to Judy, and the young bunny’s ears swiveled toward him. Ah, right. Rabbit hearing.

“Ooooookay, well, folks, it’s time for us to get a-goin’. Early bedtime for Solomon! Heh. Thank y’all for playin’!” The bunny hopped off the lamp-post he’d been using to put himself above the crowd. Solomon pocketed the cards and nodded to the goat kid, who took off in the opposite direction. Nick made use of his height to pick up the kid by the scruff of her shirt and Judy cornered the other two before they could disappear into the crowd.

Their guilty looks were  _adorable._

“Come on, Detective Wilde, let’s walk these kittens home,” Judy said loudly. “Don’t want ‘em to get hurt!”

He rolled his eyes, but acquiesced to the charade. At least none of the children would get scolded by the bunnies who’d been scammed. Setting the kid down gently, he herded her toward Judy and the five of them set off for the edge of the marketplace.

Once they were out of hearing range, Judy rounded on the three young animals, paws on her hips. “You do know you’re not very good at that, right?”

“Uh...good at what, Ma’am,” asked the rabbit, trying to play dumb.

“You, Bunny, are very convincing. Nice touch, playing on the crowd’s tendency to think they’re smarter than children, but it only works if your accomplices are  _good at their jobs._  Kid, you kept looking at your feet! And  _you,_ Solomon, didn’t anyone ever tell you that a one-pawed shuffle has a higher success rate? You have a partner. She can cover any accidental losses.”

Nick tried not to let his mouth drop open, but he was more than a little confused. The young bunny had no such reservations and just gawked at her.

“Aside from all of that...it’s not illegal to play carnival games in Animalia,” Judy continued, “but you shouldn’t do it. Technically, you’re scamming animals out of their money, and that’s not nice. You could use your talents for other things and make better money, you know. Put together an illusion show. Everybody loves those. Or try something else. But trust me, it’s no fun to get caught and have to pay back all those mammals you cheated.”

“You don’t understand,” said the bunny, who was clearly the leader of the three. “We  _had_ to-”

“Shut up, Tim,” said Solomon under his breath.

“No! They’s police! Maybe they kin  _help!”_

“Maybe we can,” Nick said slowly, trying to get a read on the situation. “Why do you  _have_ to make money at all?”

“Th-they’re going t-to Zoot-topia,” stammered the kid, whose voice was quiet and wispy.

“I said  _shut up,”_ Solomon said a little more firmly.

“No,  _Solomon,_ we ain’t gotta shut up if they’s gonna listen,” said Tim. He turned to Nick and Judy, scowling. “You  _is_ gonna listen, right?”

“We’re all ears. Well, technically  _she’s_ all ears, but mine are decent,” replied Nick.

“Good. See, Miz March ain’t nice neither. An’ Beth’s just visitin’ her grandaddy for the summer. We, Solomon an’ me, we’s gonna go to Zootopia with Beth an’ live in her backyard. But we gotta get money first, cos we ain’t gonna be burdens, y’understand?”

“I spoke with Sheriff Westing this morning,” Judy told the young ones, “and he told me that Patrice March is the only registered foster parent in town and has passed inspection every time. Now, I know that inspections aren’t the same thing as what really happens, but I can only help you if you help me figure out what’s going on.”

“Hopps,” he said warningly. This wasn’t their jurisdiction, and they were already on thin ice with child services after interfering in a Zootopia case. That they’d been right was irrelevant.

Predictably, Judy ignored him. “The correct authorities have to be notified, of course, but the word of a police sheriff can be useful in convincing them to do the right thing. You know what’s  _not_ useful? Getting caught cheating gullible bunnies out of their cash so you can run away from your legal guardian.”

All three of them looked down. Nick shook his head. “Look, I know it sucks, but...Hopps is right. If you run away, you’ll get into a bad situation. Beth, did your parents say your friends could come live with you?”

“Th-they don’t kn-kn-know about Solomon and T-Tim,” she whispered.

“You’re a good mammal, Beth,” Judy soothed, “but nobody wants children to end up on the streets, which is what will happen if you two don’t get caught first and shipped straight back to Miss March. If you could, please come into the station tomorrow and give a statement. I won’t tell anybody about your little card trick, and Nick won’t say anything either, as long as you promise to be honest with us. Are you going back to Miss March’s house tonight?”

Tim grinned and leaned forward. “Me an’ Solomon complained about how Beth’s grandaddy gives us a beatin’ for every little thing, an’ now she lets us go an’ play with Beth any time we want.”

“But he doesn’t beat you,” Nick surmised.

“At checkers, maybe,” Solomon replied, relaxing just a little. “An’ he lets us lick the beaters when he makes cookies, so it’s a kinda beatin’. An’ it’s kinda dangerous.”

“Well, good.” Judy nodded firmly. “You three go home. Stay safe with Beth’s grandpa. Nick and I will meet Miss March, and in the morning, we’ll talk to you and make a call to our friend in Zootopia. That sound okay?”

“Yessum,” chorused the little ones, and they scampered off.

“You just  _had_ to go and make things difficult for us,” he said, resting his arm across her small shoulders.

“Yes, I  _did,”_ she said tersely.

“Yeah, you did.” Nick took a noseful of her scent and nipped carefully at the tip of her ear. “I know you did. I mean, not only was it the right thing to do, but you’d probably die without a stack of paperwork to do.”

“Oh, hush.”

He grinned and eased back. “So, tell me, Carrots, how does a straight-laced cop from Bunnyburrow know Three-Card Monte?”

She ducked her head guiltily and pulled him back toward the marketplace. “Let me just preface this story by saying that I was an agile and  _very gullible_ kit, and my older brother is a literal sociopath.”

Nick’s smile grew. “This oughtta be good.”

“It was, except for the part where Sharla and I got into trouble. I was little! I didn’t know it was a scam, I only knew that Bill was giving us thirty percent of the takings, fifteen percent each, which was a lot of money to an eight year old. Mom and Dad had to set me down and explain that we were basically stealing, because Bill had told us animals were paying to  _watch us perform._ Like a play. We had to pay back all the money, Bill went to therapy, and I decided then and there that I’d be a police officer. My biggest pet peeve, to this day, is cheating.”

“Wait, wait.” He laughed and bumped her with his hip. “Is that why you were so mad at me when we met? Because I scammed you out of twenty bucks?”

“...Maybe.”

“Fluff, that is  _hysterical._ I hope someone has that on camera. Oh, you have no idea how much I wish I could have seen Little Carrots hustling bunnies.”

“Stop! I didn’t do it on  _purpose._ It was wrong,” she said hotly, speeding up so that she could put some distance between them.

“Aw, come on, I’m only giving you a hard time,” he protested. “It’s not-”

He was cut off by a loud  _bang_ and the distinct thud of a bullet against wood right by his head. Someone screamed and the crowd dispersed as festival-goers ran, but Nick was yanked down by a quick paw to hunker under a stall.

“Someone just shot at me,” he said blankly.

“No scat,” replied Judy, who – judging by her language – was angry.

Maybe he’d be angry too, once the ringing in his ears went away.

* * *

The station was more or less empty. Fish Sticks shifted on his perch, watching Nick intently. Nick sat on the floor, because he’d tried for the chair and missed, and he didn’t feel like getting up to try again. Scarlett O’Hare was attempting to take a statement from Judy, who was less than cooperative in Nick’s professional opinion. She seemed about ready to punch something.

“And you di’n see nobody,” said O’Hare, looking very flustered. It was the first time he’d seen her really emote – irritation didn’t count – and he might have felt a little bad for her, except he was the one who’d almost gotten shot.

“We saw lots of mammals,” Judy replied. She, in contrast, sounded utterly pissed off. “Seein’ ‘em wasn’t the problem, it was tryin’ to figure out who, amongst the many mammals who were  _armed,_ was the one who tried to kill my partner.”

Contrary to most city mammals, Judy had no problem with citizens carrying around firearms. Nick had been raised to believe that more saturation meant a higher risk of being shot by someone jumping the gun or flat-out feeling zoicidal, because statistically speaking, foxes were more likely to be shot doing something innocent – or at least nonviolent – than most other species. So for Judy to be making a bigger deal of this than Nick was surprising, to say the least.

Then again, Nick suspected he might be in shock, at least a little. It had happened before; he hadn’t spoken for almost a week after his ill-fated attempt at joining a scout troop, and in his early twenties, being nearly catatonic had saved him from being found by Mr. Big’s goons. After he’d come down from the adrenaline high from the Bellwether case, he’d spent three days curled up in Finnick’s van, unable to do more than open his mouth when Judy came around to feed him like a kit. Nick liked violent confrontations about as much as he liked Icy Hot enemas. Normally, he was in a place to expect them and deal with them appropriately, but this had come completely out of left field, especially since he’d been promoted.

Detectives weren’t  _supposed_ to get shot at. The whole point of getting off the beat was to cut down on the risks of the job, right? Well, the pay raise was nice, and so was being able to wear plainclothes on the job, but yeah, detective work was supposed to happen after the fact. At least, that was what television – and experience, up till Meadowbrook – had led him to believe.

“...and  _two days later,_ someone takes a shot at him! Coincidence? I doubt it. Someone targeted my partner for some reason, and if you aren’t going to contribute to the investigation, you had better  _get out of my way,”_ Judy ranted to the caribou, who looked as though she’d rather be anywhere else.

Nick watched the anger march across his partner’s face. She was tricky, sure, but she was very easy to read if you knew what you were looking for. She wore her emotions on her sleeve, and she didn’t often hide her feelings the way he did. That was probably, he reflected, why she reacted better in violent situations.

Or maybe she was just stupidly fearless. It was a toss-up, really.

“I-I don’t understand, Lieutenant,” O’Hare said haltingly. “I been livin’ here my whole life, and I never seen nobody get shot. Snakes, sure, maybe some birds too, but no _mammals.”_

“You’ve probably never seen a fox, either,” Nick joked, but it fell flat. His jaw felt funny and he couldn’t form all of his words properly. His ears were still ringing, too. How could Judy  _stand_ it?

“Nick, you need a doctor,” Judy told him gently, running her paw through his scruff. He leaned into the nice sensation. “I’m worried about that bump on your head. Your eyes are funny.”

“What bump?”

She bit her lip and leaned forward, and he only just stopped himself from kissing her. She checked the top of his head, right between his ears. “Can’t you feel where the wood hit you?”

“Oooooh, that’s where the headache came from,” he said vacantly. “Sweet. I thought I was in shock.”

“That’s not outside the realm of possibility, but let’s get your physical problem treated. O’Hare, who’s the doctor around here?”

“But I…”

 _“O’Hare,”_ Judy snapped. “Focus. I know this is your first shooting, but seriously, get it together. Nobody died. If we keep sitting here gabbing instead of finding the shooter, someone  _might,_ and if that someone is Nick Wilde, I will throw the book at you so hard your grandchildren’s grandchildren will flinch.”

“Yessum,” squeaked the caribou. “Um, we got Dr. Ohre, but I dunno if he knows enough about foxes to really treat...I’ll just...go an’ get him.”

O’Hare scurried off. Nick grinned at Judy’s consternation. “I want to call you cute, but I can’t, because it’s wrong, and I think you should kiss me anyway.”

She sighed and sat down in the chair next to him, still petting his scruff. He allowed the mild haze to overwhelm him, because it was at least better than headaches and detached panic. She was  _really_ good at that. He leaned in and rested his snout on her thigh, giving her more access to the back of his neck.

“You might not know this, but you’re talking out loud,” she told him, leaning over to press her lips to his brow.

“About how awesome you are?”

“...Yeah.”

“Only because it’s true.”

She shook. Nick opened his eyes – when had he closed them? – and saw her trying to discreetly wipe her eyes. He tried to get up, but her grip tightened and he obeyed the unspoken plea. “Don’t cry, Carrots. Nobody died.”

“But you could have! It was a lucky miss. And we don’t know who did it, or  _why,_ and I keep seeing it over and over. What if you hadn’t sped up when I did? What if you’d stopped walking for a minute? You’d be dead.”

“And that would really suck, but I’m still alive, so it’s okay.”

“It’s  _not_ okay!” He winced at her shrill tone. She grimaced and lowered her voice. “Sorry. I don’t ever really think about losing you, Nick, because it’s like you’re untouchable. Animals just like you. We go into a dangerous situation and you talk them out of hurting anybody, or I take them down, or you take them down while I distract them, and tonight’s the first time it’s actually hit me that you could  _die._ You could die doing this.”

“So could you.”

“But I’m  _prepared_ for that. I have been since I saw Point Break, you know, with Patrick Brayze. I know I can look my own death in the eye. But I dragged you into this and now…”

“And now I have just as much to lose.” He was still slurring. That was obnoxious. “You’re my shining star. No, you’re a whole galaxy. But not Happytown. That’s not even shaped like a real galaxy. It’s a tight spiral, not a Fibonacci spiral. And it smells bad. So don’t die, or you’ll be like Happytown instead of you.”

Her laugh was wet, but it  _was_ a laugh, so despite being appalled at his babbling, he considered it a success. She moved her other paw to massage his ears, and that was nice, too. “You shouldn’t be cheering me up. You’re the one who almost got shot.”

“Yeah, well, you know. I have many skills.”

“It doesn’t work without the sexy voice,” she protested, but he knew he’d gotten her.  _Zebra: Warrior Princess_ references always made her smile.

They sat together for another indeterminate amount of time before O’Hare came scurrying back into the station with an unidentified bunny in tow. Nick figured it was probably Dr. Ohre.

“Oh, dear,” said the elderly rabbit, tutting. He pulled out a pen light and flashed it twice into his paw, presumably to test it, before shining it directly into Nick’s right eye.

“Yeowch,” Nick yelped.

“Ah, f’give me, I forgot about the tapetum lucidum in canids,” said the doctor apologetically. “Try ta follow my paw with ya eyes, okay, Officer?”

“Detective,” corrected Judy.

“Detective,” the doctor agreed. “Please follow my paw.”

Nick did. It wasn’t exactly hard, except for when the doctor lifted his paw diagonally to the right, but Nick had never been able to do that very well, so it wasn’t worrying. After flicking the light into Nick’s sensitive eyes again, the doctor hummed and nodded once. “I don’t see no signs of concussion, but you oughtta take it easy anyhow. No stren’yus activity for a day or so, an’ I mean runnin’, workin’ out, operatin’ machine’ry, or sex. Don’t strain yaself at all, y’hear? Come an’ see me tomorrow if ya headache don’t go away. You can take Tylenol if it gets too bad, but no Aspirin or Ibuprofen. Don’t wanna worsen anythin’ if you’s bleedin’ inside. I don’t think you is, but if you still feel funny in the mornin’, we’ll send you up to the city for an MRI.”

“I don’t need to wake him up every hour or anything, do I, Dr. Ohre,” asked Judy.

“Naw, that’s a myth. If he don’t wake up to pee or somethin’, somethin’s wrong, but you need sleep too. Don’t think I don’t see you shakin’ like a leaf.”

“I was just scared.”

“Yeah, an’ now you’s gonna crash. Take care of yaself an’ ya fox tonight.”

“I will. Um, how much do I owe you for the emergency services?”

“Ain’t no trouble, honey, ya doin’ us a service, findin’ some psycho out ta kill folk. You get a cold, we’ll talk about payment.” The doctor laughed. “Have a good night, now.”

“Night, Doctor,” she replied. Then, she turned to O’Hare, who was scribbling on a pad of paper. “O’Hare...thank you. It took guts to go out there alone, and we both appreciate it. Even if Wilde’s not in a place to remember to say it.”

It was not, Nick thought privately, an inaccurate assessment. He kind of felt sick. A lot sick, actually. Like he was going to –

“I’ll get it,” said O’Hare softly, after he’d emptied his stomach on the station floor. “I’ll wake up Rose for company. You take ‘im back to the suite, Lieutenant. I ain’t keen ta set with my thoughts just yet.”

* * *

He didn't hear any shots, but Nick awoke with his heart in his throat, twitching and somehow still exhausted. Judy balled into his chest for a moment before poking her face through the curve of his arm to look at him groggily.

“You okay, Nick?”

“Just a weird dream,” he replied hoarsely. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I was already awake.”

She gently pushed him onto his back so that she could pull herself onto his chest. They usually didn't sleep like this, but he knew she was feeling protective after their near-miss.

He let out a happy noise as she ran her paws through his fur and murmured, “Don't know why you call me Fluff. You're fluffier than I am. With a fox on the force, we finally deserve to be called the fuzz.”

His final thoughts before falling asleep again were happy ones, which was good, because the next morning, they woke up to find that someone had written  ** _LEAVE THIS PLACE_**  on their door in red. Nick knew that scent, too, that mixture of sweet and salt that was in turns alluring and revolting.

It was written in blood.


	2. Act II

Fish Sticks walked on his perch, sticking his beak out and rocking like he was dancing. Nick had never had a pet, preferring not to bother getting attached to something that would die anyway, so he wasn’t sure if this was normal or not. Stripely didn’t seem to notice the weird movement, and Rose was half-asleep at his desk, so Nick probably could have done a strip tease and not gotten any sort of response.

He wished Judy hadn’t decided to ask O’Hare for shooting tips, because then she’d be at the station instead of the firing range. Well, O’Hare had called it the firing range. Nick would have classified it as an open field with some targets lined up, but the result was the same.

Nick poked at the cage when the parrot stuck his beak out again. “Is this thing working right?”

“You’s a ruttin idiot,” said Fish Sticks.

Nick jumped back, heart pounding in his throat. If Judy asked later, he would not mention the embarrassing sound that came out of his mouth. “I thought the talking thing was a myth!”

Stripely laughed over his stack of paperwork. “Parrots ain’t got no words of their own, but he does all right with the ones we give him.”

“You gave him swear words?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

That was fair, actually. If Nick had ever gotten a pet parrot, he’d have probably taught it rude phrases before learning how to feed the thing. Either that, or he’d have taught it to growl violent warnings. It really would have depended on whether the parrot was pre- or post-Judy.

“I’m just a little jumpy after last night and this morning,” said Nick to nobody in particular. Just in case they thought he scared easily.

“I don’t blame you.” Stripely stood and stretched before grabbing his coffee mug. “I ain’t gonna lie, it bristles my tail ta know somebody don’t care about shootin’ a cop.”

“Well, I mean, I kind of wanted to hurt the cops that hurt my dad back when I was a kit, but I wasn’t stupid enough to try anything,” Nick told the badger, shrugging. “There wasn’t even a  _reason_ to shoot at me last night, so whoever it was, they’re just...shooting to shoot. Who’s dumb enough to do that?”

“In a town like Meadowbrook, cops ain’t got the kinda rap you folks up in the city got. The better question is who wants outsiders gone. An’ that’s damn near half the town.”

“Why?”

“Cos outsiders come in with big ideas an’ make changes. The Leapyears got one of them autotills now, just cos some big-city hotshot sold Miz Evelyn on it. Half the folks here ain’t even got TV’s yet. You want a cup?”

“Sure.” Nick frowned at the new information. The number of mammals who might want to kill him was not comforting, like, at all. “But why take a shot at me?”

“They barely tolerate  _us,_ me an’ Rose an’ the Sheriff, an’ we all was born here. City folk comin’ in an’ patrollin’ the streets? It’s a wonder we ain’t got fifteen complaint calls comin’ in at a time. An’ bunnies, well...they’s a strange bunch.”

“That’s not…” Nick paused. He’d been about to say  _that’s not true,_ but he’d been to Bunnyburrow. He’d learned about the issue of food politics that had informed the bunny lifestyle even past the First Agreements. Reluctantly, he allowed, "...entirely _in_ accurate, but I’m positive they’d contend that we’re the strange ones.”

“An’ thus, our current predicament.”

 _Predicament._ It was funny, thought Nick, as he dug into the stack of files he’d chosen. The local drawl made everyone sound a little stupid, but he hadn’t met anyone legitimately stupid yet. He  _had_ met an MD, competent constables, a farmer with a business-oriented (if horribly bigoted) head on her shoulders...and the children weren’t idiots, either. He didn’t want to be  _that guy,_ not after everything he’d gone through, but it was easy to put hicks in a box when their dialect made them sound like they hadn’t finished learning the official language of Animalia.

Now he understood why Judy had trained out her accent. Even though the Bunnyburrow regional accent wasn’t nearly as thick as Meadowbrook’s, if all she had to go on was the over-pronounced, ultra-precise dialect from movies and television, he could imagine that she’d been scared it would be one more barrier between her and being taken seriously. If she sounded like a Meadowbrookian (Meadowbrookite? Meadowbrooker?), it wouldn’t matter what her qualifications were.

Case in point: Gideon Grey, who didn’t know his tail from his elbow when it came to grammar (and scientific terms), but had the most prodigious memory Nick had ever seen. One of his favorite “bored in Bunnyburrow” games was to get the other fox drunk and have him recall entire passages from books, because the information would all be correct but the pronunciation would be, well, what you might expect from someone who had never heard the words spoken aloud, had a thick accent, and was really drunk.

Turning his attention to the report in front of him, Nick noted that the report, while typed, had been modified with a pen. Apparently, the arresting officer had made...several mistakes. Hilarious ones, really.

 _Coates was ~~a ruttin idiot~~ belligerent and refused to come quietly.  ~~‘Drunk and disorderly’ isn’t half right.~~  We put him in the tank with Parker and Barrow, but that was a terrible idea. They_  _they used the time to come up with a plan. Parker and Barrow got a group together and stormed the station. We were able to ~~put them down~~_   _subdue them with little trouble, as they were all ~~rip-snorting drunk~~_   _intoxicated, and we confiscated their weapons. Among the seized weapons were several homemade explosive devices. We decided not to give them back because we don’t want anyone to harm themselves._

 **Arresting Officer:**        _Marla S. Gooseberry_

_ID# 86498, Constable, Meadowbrook Division_

Nick grinned at the list of sixteen names below Marla Gooseberry’s report. The report itself was unprofessional to the point of silliness, but he could visualize the two incidents described in the single paragraph.

“This reads like something written by someone with zero knowledge of police procedure,” he commented to the room at large. Rose snorted in his sleep, but otherwise ignored him, for obvious reasons.

“We ain’t exactly detectives,” Stripely offered. “Who’s the lucky officer gettin’ ripped to shreds?”

“Marla Gooseberry.” Nick sipped his coffee and tried not to gag. It was entirely black. He didn’t want to be rude, though, especially since Stripely was being nice. Competition or not, Nick didn’t want Stripely to dislike him. They needed the locals on their side if they wanted to finish this quickly. “I’m interested in the incident that left you short-staffed. Spottson will want a report from us – one that’s a little more detailed and a little less, uh, colorful.”

“She was...a character,” said Stripely carefully.

“In what way?”

“I ain’t sayin’ she was stupid; far from it. But Marla allus had ‘er eye on big opportunities. Just considered policin’ ta be a stopover, but she never left. She put a lotta time an’ energy in this job, even as she promised us all her flavor of the week was The One an’ he was gonna carry her to the big city.”

Remembering Lynette Stripely’s chilly reception, Nick guessed, “You were one of her flavors, weren’t you?”

“Not for lack of tryin’ on her part, but naw, bunnies ain’t my type. It’s the ears. I want my wife ta hear when I’s jerkin’ off, I’ll tell her.”

“What the – I  _really_ don’t want to know what you do in your free time, Stripely.” Nick frowned. “Or with whom you do it. I was just asking because you seem kind of...eh...overly fond of Hopps, and Lynette seemed to hate her at the barbecue.”

“Lynnie thinks I’s gonna leave her for every pretty face comes into the station, on account of I don’t sleep with her. Don’t you worry none, though, I ain’t got a thing for your partner. Don’t think I can have a thing for anyone, truth be told, just married Lynnie cos I was young an’ tryin’ ta fit in. Hopps is a hero, though, Wilde. My cousin’s sister-in-law, Madge, says Hopps is the one who put a stop to the collar legislation. An’ we’s mighty fond of freedom out here in Meadowbrook.”

“Oh.”

Nick hadn’t really thought of the implications of their first case together. He had kept an ear on the news – of course he had, times had been dangerous – but he hadn’t realized that talk of shock collars and quarantines hadn’t been limited to Zootopia. Nick’s perception of the case had been soured due to his own intermammalian conflict with Judy, but without that context – with only the knowledge that the media had released, which included what Judy had thought were the facts of the case and (eventually) a statement from Dr. Madge Honey, the foremost ID physician in Animalia – Judy would, unquestionably and enthusiastically, have been received as a hero midway through the case and at the conclusion.

“You don’t think Hopps is a hero, Wilde?”

He turned his attention to Stripely, who had a slight frown across his muzzle. “No, it’s not that. She’s a great cop. She’s the reason I was able to join the force in the first place. I just...we had a falling out during that time. I never really thought about how it looked to the rest of the country. Zootopia is full of stupid politics that keep her relevant, but nobody in Bunnyburrow talks about it at all unless they’re razzing her.”

“A fallin’ out? Wait,  _you_ was the fox threatened her on live TV?”

“I didn’t threaten her,” Nick defended, “but yes, I helped her solve the missing mammals cases before we knew about Bellwether.”

Stripely rolled his eyes and went back to his paperwork, but not before saying, “Looked like a threat to me. I telled Lynnie I’da shot you if you come at her with those claws an’ that snarl. Guess Hopps is just braver than me. Or dumber. S’pose we call it brave when nothin’ happens, an’ dumb when she gets a claw to the face.”

“Oh, come on, I was just making a point. Why would I hurt her?”

“Nobody knowed what could make decent folk go savage. I ain’t sayin’ you was doin’ it on purpose. You seem like a good mammal ta me, an’ any fool can see you’s schnoz over tail for her. I’s just sayin’ how it looked on the TV. My advice, don’t play those kinda pranks on Meadowbrook folk, less you’s cravin’ a fist in the gut.”

Yeesh. He hadn’t considered what their blowout might have looked like to the rest of the country, either. No wonder it had taken several months for the rest of the force to really warm up to him. Nick didn’t bother to try to explain what had happened – it was none of Stripely’s business, and it was old news anyway – so he just smiled politely, making sure to cover his teeth with his lips. “It probably did look pretty bad from the outside. Anyway, what can you tell me about this incident with Malcolm Coates? I got the impression that it was a drunken brawl in a bar, not a really dangerous confrontation here at the station.”

“I wouldn’t say dangerous. They’s just dumb, for the most part. I wasn’t on duty, see, but what I know is, Mal sat inna tank with Bee an’ Dale an’ plotted a coup, but the execution failed cos they was all rip-snortin’ drunk. Wendy shot a tree an’ Gene forgot to load ‘is gun, the idiot. Everbody got a citation for bein’ drunk an’ disorderly, but nobody really got hurt cept for the ones resisted arrest, so we let ‘em go next day an’ telled ‘em they mess up again, we ain’t about ta play nice twice.”

“That...is  _so_ against regulation,” Nick said.

“You ain’t one of  _them,_ is you? The kind of cop would rather cite rules than keep peace?”

“I’m one of the officers who was sent to make sure everyone’s dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s on this.” He winced as he remembered for the zillionth time that yes, he was  _exactly_ that kind of cop, because one of them had to be, and Judy had proven to be the kind of cop who would rather keep the peace (or force peace via a foot up the tailpipe) than stick to the rules. Usually, it didn’t matter. Until suddenly it did. She would probably agree with the stupid decision to let everyone go instead of charging them with assault. “I’m not mad at you, and I’m not about to lecture you; I’m just trying to figure out the chain of events. Have you thought about hiring a couple of new mammals to help out? You might get sleep-deprived now that your station is open all the time.”

“Yeah, we’s a-tryin’, but so’s all the applicants. Bunch of rabbits would rather kick us out than work with us.”

“Why  _not_ hire a rabbit or two? It might go a long way toward mending fences. Plus, you’ve seen Hopps. She’s capable. Who’s to say other rabbits wouldn’t be?”

“Same Hopps can’t handle a gun?” Stripely grinned slyly. “Or same Hopps lies about handlin’ a gun?”

“Um,” Nick said intelligently.

“Listen, I ain’t in charge of hirin’. The reason there ain’t been a bunny cop till now is they’s too emotional. Lookit what happened after a night at the bar shootin’ the scat.”

“Uh,” Nick tried.

“Anyways, you got any more questions, or can I go back to this brain-meltin’ paperwork?”

“Right. I actually have a question about the foster mother here. Patrice March.”

“What about ‘er?”

“Have you had complaints about her treatment of the kits in her care?”

“Well...yes an’ no. Miz Patrice ain’t a saint by any stretch, everbody knows that, but every time we get child services out here ta check her out, she got those cubs on their best behavior and allus passes inspection. Ain’t nothin’ we can do if we don’t catch her doin’ somethin’ wrong.”

“I know, but Hopps is on the hunt now. It’s only a matter of time before she finds a conspiracy of, I don’t know, illegal drug runners using the foster system to transport across district lines. I swear, nothing Hopps does turns out to be a normal case. Do you have any of the reports documented?”

“Sure we do. Go ahead an’ take a look, if you think it’ll do any good. Me, I figure Miz Patrice ain’t as bad as anybody tries ta say. You know cubs, allus exaggeratin’ so they can get sweets an’ sympathy.”

That, Nick thought sourly, was why the system had gotten so brutal. There was a distinct difference between “exaggerating for attention” and “changing the story so they don’t get beaten.” You could always tell which officials had come from loving families, because they couldn’t tell the difference.

* * *

He was shirtless, because it was hotter than a volcano, but Judy wasn’t being appreciative. Not that he blamed her; the longer they stayed in Meadowbrook, the more sinister everything seemed, even though she was probably right about their likelihood of being jumped by a band of angry rabbits. He was just glad that Dr. Ohre had told him he didn’t need to worry about concussion unless he got dizzy or started losing time for no reason.

From his position at the table, Nick could see the overhead light reflecting off of Judy’s gray fur as she sat, head bowed, on the bed. She was doing that thing where she nibbled on her lip. Nick always found it distracting, but usually he was busy enough to ignore it. Unfortunately, she was going over the paperwork he’d already seen, and all he had to do to entertain himself was watch her. Or play Sudoku on his phone, but again, distracting.

_Enticing._

He would freely admit that he was a bit of an outlier when it came to this stuff. He’d never felt the need to have sex until he’d really gotten to know Judy, and suddenly it was like he was catching up on thirty-five years of celibacy. Suddenly he had thoughts that were almost certainly not normal, like  _what if we did this upside-down_ or  _what if she pawcuffed me to the bed_ or  _what if she had sharper teeth._ He didn’t have these weird thoughts about anyone else; even his exes were, and always had been, in the “don’t touch” category. But he wanted to touch Judy, pretty much all the time, unless they were doing something that required all of his attention.

“This report reads like Marla Gooseberry only had a vague idea of how police work...uh, works,” commented Judy.

“That’s what I said. Apparently, she barely even wanted to be a constable, she just...never found anything else.”

“That’s not uncommon out in the country. It’s steady pay, relatively safe work, and  _not farming,_ which is a big plus. My parents kept trying to talk me into being a constable in Bunnyburrow, if I had my heart set on law enforcement, but...it wasn’t enough.”

She seemed distracted. Her ears kept swiveling toward the door, as though there were a noise that wouldn’t quit, but Nick couldn’t smell anything new. Granted, the door  _was_  thick, but they’d cracked the window behind the shutters. It took him a moment to realize she wasn’t listening to the  _door,_ she was listening to  _him._

He closed his mouth and stopped panting. Her mouth curled up into a half-smile and she kept reading, pretending as though she  _hadn’t_ forced him to notice his own embarrassing behaviors. Sneaky little devil. Sometimes he thought she was a sadist. Other times, he just figured she was too sweet for her own good, and it was a little disturbing that with Judy, he couldn’t tell the difference.

“Carrots,” he said, trying not to think about it, “I talked to Stripely today about Patrice March.”

“Let me guess. Solomon and Tim are just exaggerating.”

“Yeah.”

She huffed, clenching her paw into a fist before smoothing her face into something rather more impassive than he was comfortable with. “It figures. That’s always the case, right up until they get hurt. And even then,  _children are clumsy_ or  _he attacked me first, I was just restraining him._ I like child services almost as much as I like getting punched by a hippo.”

“What kind of experience do you have with them, anyway? It’s not like you were in the system. I’d have thought you’d be all for child services, but history suggests otherwise.”

“It’s complicated.” Those were two innocent words, but chained together, they were absolutely terrible. He braced himself. “I had a friend whose parents weren’t the greatest. He was really nice at first, until he wasn’t. We weren’t friends for long because I...I wasn’t there for him. Maybe if I’d understood back then, if I’d been a real friend when nobody else cared, he wouldn’t have turned into a jerk and I wouldn’t have scars on my cheek. I know I’m not responsible for his actions, but I’m responsible for  _mine._ And we’re friends again  _now,_ but that doesn’t change the facts. I know Sharla’s mom called child services to check out his living situation back when we were seven. They went away satisfied, and the next day, he broke his arm ‘being clumsy.’ I can’t believe I actually believed it! I just couldn’t comprehend that some parents kept kits they didn’t love. But I don’t think I should have to have a reason to be angry about these kits getting hurt. If I have to have some kind of animal connection to care about a cause, that says a few big things about my levels of empathy.”

“You can’t save the world, Fluff,” he said, but somewhere inside he actually questioned that. Judy was the kind of force of nature that could just bend reality to her will.

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t  _try._ I keep thinking if we can save these children from that anger and helplessness, maybe other children will be nicer to them and they’ll never feel like they have to claw the heck out of someone’s cheek just to have some kind of control.”

Good God, he loved her. He’d seen the scars before, but he’d never thought to ask; he’d assumed she got them in college during the same period she’d gotten the nasty ones on her back, when she experimented with different styles of street fighting like Kajukenbo and Krav Maga. MMA fighters tended to look like they’d gotten into fights with weed trimmers. “This wasn’t – oh, what’s his name...it wasn’t Bobby, was it? His stall sells the best tuna rolls, and I’d really hate to have to decline them on principle.”

She snorted, then covered her muzzle with her paws. “Don’t make me laugh about serious stuff, you goober. This is worse than the meat pie jokes.”

“Okay, but  _was it?_ Totally serious question, because I need to know how cool I have to play it when we go visit your family again.”

“No, Nick, it wasn’t Bobby. I, uh. It’s not really...I shouldn’t reveal his identity without his permission. He’s nice now. We’re  _friends._ That means a lot. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

 _He’s nice now._ His stomach did a little flip that was not at all pleasant as he realized the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me you got those from a f – from Gideon?”

She stroked her own cheek, almost as if it were instinct, before shrugging and pretending Gooseberry’s report was much more interesting than he knew it was. “I didn’t want you to treat him differently. I knew you’d be mad at whoever hurt me – and I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, I think it’s sweet when you feel like you have to protect me – but you  _don’t_ have to. I didn’t have many friends until I moved to Zootopia, and I treasure the ones I have. That includes someone who hurt me and then apologized for it. Forgiveness is a thing mammals do. You took me back, didn’t you?”

 _You didn’t scar me for life,_ he wanted to say, but she wasn’t wrong. Moreover, in this context, some of her weirder quirks – and her initial reactions to his anger – made Stripely’s earlier comments seem much less silly. Was he supposed to apologize, though? Now that it had been so long? She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, but was she still mad? Of course she wasn’t, that was stupid. Right?

He wasn't some kind of  _bravery_ test, was he?

“I know that look. C’mere, Nick.” She patted the space next to her and moved her pile of papers. He moved from the kitchen table to the bed, which was really where he wanted to be anyway. “You’re going to get a stiff face if you keep frowning like that.”

She kneaded his paw, making his claws look more prominent as his fingers splayed. He kept his pleased noises to a minimum, but she was good at making him relax. What had he been thinking? He wasn't some kind of mountain to climb. Judy would never use him that way.

“I was just thinking that you probably thought I was threatening you – remember, when we thought that first case was over – and it never even occurred to me that you might have a reason to be afraid of me, so I didn’t think to apologize-”

“I'm not angry with you, Nick,” she told him softly, pressing her paw to his lips. He licked it to watch her eyelids flutter. “I knew – well, I figured out – that you weren’t trying to scare me. You didn't mean to be threatening. I would never hold it against you. I mean, when I saw you sleeping in that abandoned building a week later, I did think about cuffing you and dragging you to the station to get clear with you and force you to sleep in an actual bed, but it would have been the worst kind of unethical. And I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

Judy. Pawcuffs. Interrogation. Nick’s imagination went wild for a minute, because, well, it was super hot, even though she hadn't meant it to be. In just moments, it felt like the whole room had gotten warmer, and by the appraising look she was giving him, she could tell. He took a breath and went for it. “You could, you know.”

“Why would I carry a grudge for-”

“I mean cuff me.” He met her eyes, noting the change in her breathing and the widening of her pupils. Oh  _ho._ “I mean interrogate me. Have your wicked way with me. Really, Carrots, I'm interested to see what kinds of stuff you can come up with.”

“You _uuuuuu_ really want –  _ugh.”_ Nick smiled, delighted, as she moaned at his touch. His paws slipped beneath her shirt and teased at her chest and abdomen, hard enough for her to feel and light enough to not be enough. She retaliated by straddling him, grinding down onto him, because she was nothing if not competitive. “You want to be restrained?”

“I want to try it, at least. Don't you want to?”

It was a rhetorical question. She’d talked about alternative uses for pawcuffs quite a bit during her Solstice ramblings. But she didn’t exactly remember that night, having consumed so much mead he’d thought she might die of alcohol poisoning.

She moaned again as his paws dipped lower before replying, “I –  _hah –_ I’ve thought about it, but doesn't that...send a weird message? A prey anima _aaaaal_ cuffing a fox to the bed?”

“Who cares? It’ll be really hot, and nobody else has to know what kinds of hijinks we get up to. It’s not like you’ll parade me around in a cork leather collar.” He heard her breathing hitch and his smile morphed into something practically ancestral. He could feel it radiate through his entire muzzle. “Or maybe you will. Let’s start small. If you’re up for it.”

“I’m...yeah. I'm up for it.” Her smile turned sly. “Get your paws up, Slick.”

He complied, but not before licking her nose, because he could reach it and because he relished every form of contact they had. Judy reached over and got her cuffs out of the drawer (because of  _course_ she’d have a set within groping distance at all times), setting the key on the side table where it would be easily accessible. She was shaking when she clicked one side onto his left wrist, and he caught her paws. “You don't have to do this, if you’re really not okay with it. It’s just a suggestion.”

“I want to,” she assured him, “but I want it to be as good for you as it’s going to be for me. I don't want to hurt you.”

Heat flooded through him, but he was too far gone to be embarrassed about it. “It’s okay if you do. I might even enjoy it. And if I don’t, I’ll tell you to stop. I'm a big boy, Judy.”

“You certainly are,” she murmured, and clicked the other cuff onto his right wrist. She stood slightly and secured the chain around the decorative swirl in the middle of the wolf-sized headboard, keeping him upright and just a little stretched, and the shift in position made him much more aware of everything.

Nick watched her appreciate the view as she sat back on his thighs. She nibbled on her lip again (one of these days he was going to find out if she’d be okay with him nibbling on it too) and shifted to take care of the buttons on his pants. She was agonizingly slow, circling each of his six buttons (whoever had decided six was an acceptable number for _slacks_ needed to be rutted gently with a chainsaw) with a nail-tip before unbuttoning them. Her attention to detail was weirdly erotic, especially since he wasn't in a position to touch her.

“Okay, hips up,” she told him, hooking her paws into the waistband of his slacks and underwear. He obeyed that too and tried to see himself as she saw him. It was hard, because penises were kind of gross, but she didn't seem to mind. Was he appealing? She’d never quite stared at him like this, hungry and intense, so he supposed he was.

She gripped him carefully and, again at a glacial pace, began to move her paws. With the inability to touch her or help things along, he could only buck his hips, but she didn’t take the unspoken hint; instead, she smirked and limited her touch to one gentle finger swirling around the tip. It was...almost painful, but he wasn't going to let her win the game she was playing, so he refused to say anything. He wouldn't plead with her. He wouldn't beg. He would have  _dignity_ and  _pride_ and would absolutely whine a little when she began to rub him in earnest, because  _oh, God,_ was that good.

Judy, rather than being turned on by the physical, had a thing for sound. The jingling sound of a belt buckle hitting the floor. The growling noise he sometimes made when he felt overwhelmed. The keening and panting he did during sex. If he wanted to soften her and speed things along, he would amp up the volume, sending little nonverbal signals to her brain through her sensitive ears:  _yours, yours, yours._ It always worked.

Well, almost always.

He knew, because he could smell, that it was working to turn her on, but it did not speed up the process. Instead, she opened her mouth, and licked – with just the end of her tongue – from base to tip. He knew he wouldn’t get more than her tongue; her mouth wasn’t big enough to fit his penis without scraping him with her large curved teeth, which was  _not_ the fun kind of pain. Still, he could imagine how it would be, the heat, the soft wetness of her mucosa, and the tightness in his groin was nigh unbearable. He  _almost_  begged her to let him down, to go faster, but she knew what she was doing, was probably  _trying_ to get him to plead with her, and he wasn’t going to give in.

His hips jutted up involuntarily when she paid special attention to the base of his testicles. She’d never gone further than that – had only massaged him from the outside – but it was a kind of pressure that he’d never even considered experiencing, before Judy. He didn’t bother holding back his moan, because she liked it when he got loud and he wanted to motivate her.

Finally,  _finally,_ she sped up, working her magic on his penis, and he imagined that he was saying her name through the haze,  _Judy, Judy, Judy,_ and his arms shook under the pressure of her jerks and his bucking hips. His wrists were going to be  _screaming_ at him later, but it didn’t matter, he was  _so close,_ and –

And then she stopped, something like a teasing grin painting her muzzle. He shuddered, gasping, as she held onto his hips to keep him from moving too much.

“Oh, no  _fair,”_ he half-whispered. His voice was rougher than he’d expected.

“What’s unfair is that you’re having all the fun,” she retorted, and technically that was true, but she knew exactly what he’d meant. “You all right?”

A check-in. Even when she had him at her mercy, she was sweet about it. “Yeah.”

He could feel himself twitch in time with his pulsing heart, and he was sure she could feel it too, based on the way her smile transformed into something much more genuine. She stood again and stripped off her clothes, working off each article slowly and sensually. When she finally dropped her panties to the floor, he was in an absolute  _fit._

“You’re really worked up, huh?”

“Rub it in, why don’t you.”

“Nah.” She moved against him until she was perfectly aligned, ready to drop. He waited in eager anticipation, but she only pressed her lips against his forehead and added, “Hi, Nick. How are you doing?”

He was going to die if she didn’t move. “Okay, Judy, you win,  _please_ just-”

She just, and it was incredible.

There was something about the restriction of movement, the tightness in his body, that made him feel every inch of contact. Sex with Judy had always been great, even back when they’d both been awkward and confused about what would fit where and how, but this was new and amazing. It was so intense it bordered on painful, since he was already worked up from before, and with Judy’s paws working herself, brushing up against the base of his penis, it didn’t take long for release to come. When she followed shortly after, he was wrung out and sated and in no position to move.

Sometimes he wished she were a little bit bigger or he were a little bit smaller, but there was no way he’d ever look anywhere else for such a trivial thing as being tied to someone. It wasn’t just the sex that was great. He couldn’t imagine  _not_ being by her side.

Judy groped for the key on the bedside table, then reached up to unlock his left wrist. The cuff came apart and he slid both of his arms down, wincing as the free cuff knocked her upside the ear. He hadn’t thought of that.

“I’m sorry,” she said nonsensically.

“Sorry? I’m the one who bumped you. Carrots, that was – I’ve never – there’s nothing to be sorry  _for.”_

She released his right wrist and kissed it, tossing the cuffs and key to the side with one paw. She was still shaking, but so was he. “You’re going to be sore later. I can tell from the marks here.”

“Worth it.” He licked her ear and she slumped forward, interlacing their paws. She was such a silly romantic sometimes. “I mean, maybe if you want to do this again, we can invest in some cuffs with actual padding, but...yeah.  _Totally_ worth it.”

“You...want to do this again?”

“I could stand to try it a few more times, yeah.”

“You’re the best,” she said sleepily. “I’m so lucky you like me.”

She was already asleep by the time he’d worked up the nerve to say, “Like is a weak term for how I feel about you.”

Her nose twitched, but otherwise, all was quiet and still.

* * *

It was a good thing that they only napped gently for an hour before doing the responsible thing and cleaning themselves, getting dressed for bed, and eating a post-coital snack, or the next morning would have gone even worse.

Judy’s ears twitched spastically against his chest. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper, so the slap woke him at the same time as her head popped up from below the covers. Before he could ask what she’d heard, she covered his mouth and said, “Shh. I hear a...sort of wispy noise. Dragging? No, something else. Do you smell gunpowder?”

“Yeah,” he said, fully awake.

“C’mon, let’s move,” she urged, and if she noticed that he was slightly hysterical, she didn’t mention it.

_I don’t want to die I don’t want to get shot I’m sorry for all those times I said bunnies were cute Judy seriously, oh my God I love Judy I don’t want her to die I swear I’ll be a good fox for the rest of my life if we get out of this alive I'll treat her like a goddess oh please let us be wrong I –_

They were barely clear of the premises when a great  _boom_ made his ears ring and his feet vibrate. He didn’t need to see the damage to know that everything they’d brought with them – their phones, Judy’s laptop, their clothes, their  _snacks –_ was gone.

“I didn’t take you for the prayerful type,” Judy said shakily, stealing his humorist coping mechanism.

“I’m not. Wait, did I say all of that out loud?”

“Maybe? I didn’t hear most of what you were saying, I was too busy running for my life. Thanks, by the way.”

He looked down at her and frowned. Her ears had a funny slant to them. “For what?”

“For picking me up when I tripped.”

“I did that?”

She laughed. For some reason, he laughed too. And then they were both laughing, even though they’d almost  _died,_ even though their suite was now a fiery wreck, even though whoever’d tried to blow them up was probably still watching them, but he couldn’t stop laughing.

“That was attempted murder,” he said through giggles. “Oh my God, Carrots, we were almost blown up.”

“I know, right? We almost died!” Her laughter abruptly transformed into a sob. “Nick, we...we almost  _died._ We were almost  _blown up.”_

Judy was crying, which meant all was not right with the world. Known facts: someone had shot at him and only barely missed. Someone had written a nasty message on their door in chicken blood. Someone had blown up their suite. Judy was crying. Conclusion: they had to get out of the open, under some kind of cover, and come up with a plan. Course of action: grab Judy and run.

For a crazy minute, Nick felt seven years younger. His dodging and weaving with Judy tucked neatly under his arm took him straight back to the Natural History Museum – which they had by mutual, unspoken agreement avoided since that day – and he expected to see a big angry sheep blocking their path. He didn’t see any sheep, but he  _did_ see Evelyn Leapyear and another rabbit Judy had called Paul at the marketplace, both leading a party of bunnies in their direction.

“Figures,” he spat, heading toward the marketplace.  _Surely_ the bunnies wouldn’t try anything in broad daylight in front of dozens of other mammals, right?

It  _had_ to be the bigot, didn’t it? Why couldn’t mammals just have flaws? He’d been spoiled by Judy, whose willingness to push past her justified fears and unjustified biases had made him forget that sometimes a spade is a spade, and sometimes a spade is a thing someone will use to bury your dead body.

If he lived through this, he was going to make some more friends. Terrible, nasty, prejudiced ones. And he would never forget to not trust mammals ever again.

“Jolene! Kill ‘em,” someone shouted, and Nick’s stomach dropped when he saw a hare step out of her stall with a gun pointed right at them.

In fact, they all had guns pointed right at them.

“Dammit,” he shouted, turning sharply. His slip on the ground was probably the only thing that saved him from a clean headshot. “Snap out of it, Carrots, I need you! I’m a damsel in distress! Save me!”

Well, that did the trick. Then again, he had expected it. She had a nasty savior complex that was going to get her killed one day, and if she ever pointed to this as an example of why savior complexes were a  _good_ thing, he’d make her sleep on the couch for a week.

“Sweet sassafras,” she swore, jumping out of his arms and drawing a small sidearm –  _what!?_ When had she had time to grab that? – from places unknown. Where had she been keeping that?

“We’re in our  _pajamas,”_ he pointed out, because nothing made sense anymore. “You’re wearing a  _nightgown.”_

“A lady is always prepared,” she shot back, directly quoting his mother’s mantra.

“That’s supposed to be about furbrushes and perfume! Not  _guns!”_

“This lady is a cop! It’s not my fault you don’t sleep in your thigh holster! Now get behind me, Nick, I’m about to shoot my way out of here and I don’t want you to get hit or left behind.”

Nick had some choice grumbles queued up, but he decided to save them for a time when they weren’t gunning for their own lives. Judy’s logic was sound, if terrifying, and he prepared himself to run.

He got down on all fours, keeping as low to the ground as he could, and watched Judy’s ears as she shot wildly into the oncoming crowd. He could always tell where she was about to run next by her ears, and although they were surrounded by bunnies (and a few small mammals he vaguely recognized from around town), he didn’t think they would be nearly as cognizant of her nonverbal communication. After all, half the things she did with her ears were trained into her at the ZPA.

Judy shot again and led him through the stalls. He could see her reasoning; they’d probably be less likely to shoot if they might get hit by friendly fire. Fortunately, Judy had no such reservations. Marius from the carrot stall and Jolene the hare both got bullets in their shooting arms, and another male rabbit whose gun was firmly pointed at Nick got a bullet in the chest.

Nick felt sick, but there wasn’t time to dwell.

In the distance, a barn stood tall like an ugly, decrepit beacon, and Judy led him toward it. Some cover was better than no cover, and at least in a barn loft they’d have the tactical advantage, even if they had to get rid of some inhabitants first. Hopefully the owners would be nice, gentle mammals who would give them biscuits and hide them and what was this, some kind of feel-good work of fiction? Like they’d ever be that lucky.

Every time Judy took a shot, she probably hit somebody. Nick didn't look back, partially because it would slow them down and partially because he didn't want to  _see._ Why had he become a cop again?

When they reached the barn, he helped her block the door. Her chest heaved and she gave him a blinding grin, looking oh so proud of him for whatever it was she thought he’d done. Right,  _that_ was why he’d become a cop. Because Judy had believed he could be good at things, and she’d been right.

“Someone go get a log,” came an angry voice from outside.

“Idiots, do they really think they’ll be able to batter this door down? It’d be easier to tear a hole in the siding,” Judy seethed.

“Those are almost all bunnies, Carrots. They can probably hear you. Don't give them  _ideas.”_

Judy nodded and paced in front of him. “Okay, let’s take stock. I have...two bullets left, you don't have a gun, and our stuff is up in flames even if we could get to it. Ugh, I paid sixty bucks for that stupid dress! What a waste of good money.”

“Yeah, and in this universe where our lives are more important than clothes, we could also use that,” he said, pointing to the loft.

“What do you see? You're the one who can see in dim light.”

“I think it’s a cannon. It looks like one.”

Her eyes lit up and she scampered up the ladder. Hearing a great bang as the log hit the door for the first time, Nick quickly followed. She was running her paws all over the cannon, ignoring the various weaponry stacked haphazardly beside it.

“Nick,” she said reverently, “this isn't a cannon. This is a  _Catling gun.”_

* * *

Catling guns, Nick decided very quickly, were the worst. They were big and heavy and apparently required an entire annoying history lesson while they were being loaded.

“...and so the Union used it against the Confederate army. I’m not saying that history could have had a different outcome were it not for that victory, but I  _am_ saying that the issue of food politics was federally decided when the Union eventually triumphed, so extrapolate as you will. Anyway, we wouldn’t have machine guns now if it weren’t for the Catling gun-”

 _Thokthokthok._ Nick jumped away from the window as a rapid-fire spray of bullets hit the paneling. Annoyed, he said, “That might be a  _good_ thing, Carrots.”

“Don’t be silly, machine guns are  _gorgeous.”_

Then, a crash sounded. Nick and Judy exchanged a sour look as they realized that some bright mammal had decided to attack the siding instead of the door. Nick hefted a rifle and aimed it down the ladder, just in case.

“Okay, I’ll handle this baby. You watch my back. We can’t really do anything about the mammals who are already here, but I’m going to try to scare off that crowd in the distance. Hopefully I won’t hit anybody, but...well, better to hit them than to get hit, am I right?”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, because she was right, but he wasn’t comfortable with having a death on his paws, even if it  _was_ justified. It went against everything he’d grown up believing. He’d never fired anything more than a tranq at a live mammal. Before that, the whole point of being a small-time hustler was to leave no real victims. When things had gotten too bad in the Big operation, he’d let slip that Grandmama’s favorite rug was made out of a skunk butt.

(Miscalculation, while rare,  _had_ happened. He’d expected to be kicked out, not pursued and threatened with death. Moral of the story: don’t get friendly with the mob. Judy hadn’t gotten that memo, but at least Fru-Fru was fiercely protective of her BFF Judy.)

A bunny’s head popped through a hole in the wall. Nick waited until his body appeared and then shot at his shoulders. Although he missed, at least it forced the bunny to retreat, lest he get bullets to the face. A spray of bullets came through the hole instead, forcing Nick to dive to the side.

“Why are they trying to  _kill_ us,” he shouted over the noise of the Catling gun. The noise was awful. His brain felt like it was rattling in his head. He couldn’t even imagine how _Judy_ felt.

“I don’t know,” she shouted back. “We’ve been nice to them this whole time! Mind your six!”

He swiveled his torso to see Paul crawling through a smaller hole. Nick braced himself for the kickback and shot out Paul’s kneecap before switching to a better position and plugging him in the head. He’d underestimated the sheer amount of damage a single bullet that size could do to a bunny, though, and felt his stomach heave at the spray of blood, brain, and shattered bone. He would probably vomit later, but in the moment, he could only pat himself on the back for keeping himself and his partner alive. “I  _told_ you they were all going to gang up on us and do something horrible, didn’t I? Happy Valley, my sweet fluffy tail!”

“The sign did tell us it’s the Crappy Valley!” She flinched. “Whoops! Didn’t mean to hit her. Oh wait, that’s Patrice March. Ha! Fifty points for me!”

“You’re a sick bunny, Hopps,” he told her loudly, because it was true. Once the adrenaline wore off, they were both going to feel very guilty.

“You know you love me!”

That gleeful grin. That determination. That ability to do what was necessary, even when it was distasteful. She would have made a perfect crime boss, but instead, she’d chosen to make the world a better place. “Am I in love with you? Yes, yes I am!”

She whooped and turned her crank. He took another shot at an emerging bunny and grinned, because her enthusiasm was absolutely contagious. Nick didn’t think he believed in the Dark Place, but on the off-chance that it existed...yeah, they were both going there.

* * *

They were both riding high on success and hormones when the bunny horde apparently decided discretion was the better part of valor and got out of there. Judy took lazy shots at their feet, but Nick knew she could hit them if she had to; she was just trying to scare them.

“They haven’t been drugged,” Nick said aloud, trying to work through the problem. Maybe if they could figure out the  _reason_ for the sudden insanity, then they could stop it without killing anybody else.

“Why do you say that?”

If he could keep talking, maybe he wouldn’t have to think. “We’ve worked drug cases before. Downers don’t make you kill mammals, and uppers have specific markers that I didn’t see on any of them. I mean, my long-distance vision isn’t as good as yours, but I know what I saw. Those were sober, sane animals. Except one, but he reeked of alcohol, and I think he’s the one who’s just drunk all the time.”

“The one who’s drunk all the time?”

“There’s always one, isn’t there? The town drunk?”

“Yeah, because every small town is just like the movies.” She took a shuddering breath and leaned against his shoulder, shaking. “Oh, rain and hail, Nick, what did we just  _do?”_

“We protected ourselves and each other,” he told her firmly, though honestly he wanted an answer to that question as well. “We did what we promised to do six years ago when I became your partner.”

“I didn’t think it would entail stealing weapons from a barn and gunning down civilians,” she murmured. “I thought it would be talking drug dealers into confessing and  _saving_ civilians from, I don’t know, muggings or gang violence or jaywalking accidents.”

“Maybe it’s karma? A whole slew of terrible things to make up for all the nonviolent confrontations we’ve had and our unusual success with de-escalation?”

She relaxed into him when he put his arm around her. He wanted it to be an altruistic move, but he felt better when she was in his arms. He felt  _safer._ She had been his harbor in a sea of weird and stupid scat for the past seven years, and he needed to see and feel that she was okay. “You don’t believe in karma, Nick.”

“Well, no, I’m not a tahr. I don’t really believe in anything except myself anyway. And you. But I’m just saying, eventually our luck was going to run out.”

“We just shot at a lot of animals. Some of them are dead now.”

“Hey.” He kissed the soft inside of her ear, making it twitch. “It’s like you said. Better them than us. At least you got to use a Catling gun, right?”

“I feel bad for feeling good about getting Patrice March. That was a terrible thing to do. I mean, it was the  _right_ thing to do, and she deserves to be dead if her hobbies are hurting kits and shooting at cops, but it’s wrong that I’m the one who shot her. Like...it’s not bad she’s dead, but it’s bad that I shot her because it made me feel good to know she was dead. She was a mammal, not a snake or a cardboard cutout.”

“She could have turned around when you started cranking,” he reminded her gently, entwining their fingers. Sometimes he was a silly romantic too. “You weren’t shooting to kill. She was trying to kill  _us.”_

“Was she?”

He squeezed. He didn’t know the answer to that, but considering everything that had happened that morning, he had to assume that the answer was, “Yeah. She was part of the group who wants us dead.”

They sat quietly for a moment, just being with each other in the loft. Nick tried not to think about the bodies down below. Eventually, Judy said, “You were really brave today. I broke down and you saved me. It’s thanks to you that we’re alive.”

“You wouldn't have left  _me_ behind, would you?”

“No, of course not! I mean, not in theory. Can’t really tell you what I  _would_ do, only what I  _hope_ I would do. And what I  _hope_ is that I'd be as amazing as you were today. As...as you always are. You’re the bravest mammal I’ve ever met.”

He couldn’t help the snorting laugh that came out of his throat at that. “Carrots.  _Carrots._ I’m afraid of a limo driver.”

“We all have our weaknesses.” She looked up at him, smiling. “Yours is apparently a sexy cheetah with a temper.”

“You think she’s sexy?”

“Well, not as sexy as you,” she said plainly, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. Why was she so perfect? “You’re like if Compère Lapin and Venus had a kit and gave it to your mother to raise.”

“Exactly zero parts of that sentence make me actually feel good about myself,” he teased, “but thank you anyway.”

“I’m afraid if we stop joking we’ll have to start thinking,” she admitted.

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

He was about to say something else, hopefully something that would make her laugh, but she put a paw over his mouth. Considering the events of the morning, and the angle of her ears toward the door below the loft, he decided it wasn’t wise to lick it again.

“Aim for the door,” she murmured, so softly that even leaning close he could barely hear her. He raised his rifle and swallowed harshly. Judy, meanwhile, hefted a gun that was probably too big for her and made herself small.

The bar slid and the hinges groaned as the door swung open. Nick was afraid even to blink.

“Beth? They’s gone,” said a voice. Nick watched as a goat limped into the barn. He was probably a hundred and ten or something, gnarled in places that shouldn’t be gnarled and soft around the edges. His legs shook as he shuffled forward with the help of a smooth wooden cane.

A piece of the barn floor raised and Nick pointed his gun at it just in case, but sighed quietly in relief when he saw who the old goat had been speaking to.

“Grandaddy,” said the goat kid from the other night, tears evident in her voice. She emerged from the hatch with Solomon and Tim in tow.

Judy dropped her gun to the floor, slumping and taking deep breaths. Tim looked up at the balcony immediately and his mouth dropped open. “Officer Fox?”

“Get behind me,” said the old goat sharply, and it was lucky Nick and Judy were not about to shoot some children, because he would have been pretty ineffective cover.

“Wait, those is the real cops from the city,” argued Tim. “The ones gonna fix Miz March.”

Judy let out an abrupt wet laugh. Nick winced. “Yeah, about that. She’s kind of…”

“Dead,” his partner supplied.

“Dead, dead, or the kinda dead where they come back ta life at Yule, drink lotsa whiskey, show up with baby presents, an’ say how sorry they is,” asked Solomon suspiciously, which explained how he had ended up in the system.

“I hit her with the Catling gun. On accident.”

“To be fair,” Nick said, giving Judy a mild glare. She didn’t seem to notice, and he worried that maybe she was being...adversely affected by their hectic morning. “She was shooting at us, and Hopps  _did_ try not to hit anybody.”

Tim spat on the ground. “Least she ain’t gonna hurt nobody no more.”

“Why don’t we all go inside,” said the old goat, hugging Beth to him, “and we can talk about everything. Think I got some biscuits inna cupboard.”

“Thank you very much, Sir,” said Judy, but Nick could only think that life was a series of ironies that got more and more ridiculous as time went on, and he wasn’t very happy about it.

* * *

After a shot of that terrible cold tea and a nibble on some flaky, bready things (that would have been delicious were it not for the fact that Nick wasn’t sure he could keep anything down), Judy seemed to be entirely recovered. Nick envied her stamina, and decided not to insult either of them by pretending he was just too old to keep up with her. The truth was, Judy had a special quality that most others never cultivated. Being a highly emotional being, she could generally feel her feelings, take the relevant lesson or benefit from them, and discard what was no longer useful until she had time to deal with everything. She had done it quite a few times in high-stress situations since they had been working together. She’d never quite gotten the hang of walling off her emotions, like Nick could do, but this was her own version of the same practice.

It  _probably_ wasn’t very healthy, but Judy could get overwhelmed with self-doubt on occasion, and there was no time for that on the job. Every officer, eventually, had to either get tough or scrub out.

“I don’t know why they blew up our place or came after us,” Judy told the old goat – Ragnar Gompers the Third, which was the kind of name you’d give a poor sap chosen by a magic sword to save a small population – with a bit of a cluck in her voice. “To make things worse, our phones were in there, so we can’t even call Chief Spottson for backup.”

“Well, I got a phone, Miz Judy,” said Ragnar Gompers the Third. His wide smile showed an incomplete set of teeth. “S’long as you got a number.”

“I’ll make it. I have the station number memorized,” said Nick, because Gompers was unsettling. Unlike his granddaughter, he had the ancestral side-slit pupils – some mammals were still born with ancestral traits now and then, though it was uncommon – and for some reason, Nick just needed to get out of the room for a second.

“Phone’s inna kitchen.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, and left the area. He wasn’t proud of it, but there was something completely creepy about Gompers. He was a nice, charitable old goat, and Nick was grateful for the treatment, and he just...needed a minute. Yeah. A nice minute on the phone with Spottson would fortify him, because Spottson was annoying enough to shut off Nick entirely. He dialed Clawhauser directly, because he couldn’t actually remember the station’s number.

“Ben Clawhauser speaking,” said Ben Clawhauser, and Nick had never been more relieved to hear that slightly grating voice.

“Clawhauser, don’t say anything,” he said quickly. “This is Wilde. We’re stuck in Meadowbrook and-”

“Are you a ghost,” came Ben’s quivering voice. “Oh em  _g_ _oodness,_ are you haunting me? I swear, I wasn’t the one who told Porcino you were gay!”

“I’m not haunting – wait,  _what?_ No, don’t answer, I don’t care. Listen, I’m not haunting you because I’m not  _dead,_ but we need backup. Everybody went Looney Tunes and started trying to kill us, but we’re not dead yet and we won’t be if you get some uniforms out here to save us!”

“But the  _Chief,”_ said Ben, and Nick could hear the distaste in his voice, “said three days ago that you’d been killed in a tractor accident.”

“Then he’s as bug-sniffing crazy as they are. Clawhauser, do you really think that if I were dead, I’d be haunting  _you?_ When Bogo is retired and has a home phone?”

“You’re right. You’re alive! Yes! Okay, I’ll tell Spottson-”

“No.” Nick frowned, thinking furiously, keeping an eye on the door. Judy and Gompers were now leaning over a crossbow, which, okay, that  _was_ pretty cool. “No, if Spottson told you days ago we died in a tractor accident...we checked in with him yesterday. He’s got to be in on this. Don’t tell him, just...maybe coordinate with Precinct Three. They’ve been wanting to surpass us for a while now, so I’m sure you can sweet-talk them into bending the rules until we’re safely extracted.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Ben promised. “Oh, no, gotta go, Spottson’s headed this way.”

Nick didn’t bother saying goodbye, because Ben had already hung up.

He walked quietly back to the living room just in time to hear Gompers say, “...back in ‘98. It was a different world back then, you know that, right?”

“I do,” replied Judy. The children were absent. “My parents sank a lot of money into bad investments. We recovered, but it wasn’t the same.”

“That why you’s a cop, Miz Judy?”

“I’ve always wanted to stand up for what’s right. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I think their struggles did help influence my decision. They had to file bankruptcy and we were all lucky the house and vehicles belonged to the business, or they’d have lost a lot more than they did. I remember hearing the whole story when I was seventeen and thinking it was awful that the CEO went to jail for a few years and went back to being rich and annoying, while mammals like my parents spent over a decade just trying to make up the losses. Hi, Nick. How did the phone call go?”

“Clawhauser thought I was a ghost at first,” Nick told her automatically, “but I reminded him that if I were dead, I’d spend all my time prank calling Bogo on his home phone. He’s working on getting us backup, probably from Precinct Three.”

“Three?”

“Well, Spottson told everyone we were dead the day after we arrived here. Whatever’s going on, he must be part of it.”

Her face crumpled. “Are we dead, dead? Like are our parents planning funerals? Or did he just say that to our coworkers?”

“...I don’t know.” His stomach sank slowly as he realized that his mother might believe she’d outlived her son. Bonnie and Stu might believe they had no body to bury. And poor _Cotton._ She idolized Judy. “But all we have to do is survive long enough to explain everything, right?”

“I  _hate_ police corruption,” she said fiercely, clenching her paw into a fist. “I hated it when we put away Ruffstein, I hated it when it forced Chief Bogo to resign, and I hate it now. I wish we could put every corrupt cop in a ring and make them fight each other, Padiator style.”

“Getting a little violent there, Carrots,” he commented, mostly because he had nothing else to say.

“Well they deserve it.”

“Really?”

She drooped. “No, nobody deserves those costumes. Just let me have this one fantasy. Please.”

He grinned at her, because she was too...well, whatever the nice, PC equivalent of cute was. Adorable didn’t really cover the scope of it. Oh well.

“Anyway,” she said, “thank you so much for having us, Mr. Gompers, but we should probably get going. We don’t want to lead anybody to your home, and I’d like to check the station archives. We might find something interesting if we look into arrest records or at least disturbance citations. There has to be a reason we were attacked.”

“Ya welcome, Miz Judy,” said Gompers with a gentle smile. “An’ take ‘at crossbow, if you like it. You can take a couple of guns, too, but I reckon a primitive weapon’s better’n nothin’ if you run outta ammo.”

“Oh, I can’t fire this old thing, but we’ll take the guns.”

That was nice and everything, but Nick found Gompers very suspicious. What kind of animal was just  _nice_ to random weapons-stealing outsiders? Was the goat in on it? He hoped not, but frankly, he was tired of trusting animals who were totally out to get him.

* * *

Nick felt ridiculous as he tailed Judy into town. It wasn’t the way they peered around corners like frightened children, or the way every sound made both of them jump, but the way he’d fastened guns to his body like he was some kind of walking armory. Judy had a similar setup, but somehow, her green nightgown made the whole look less “buddy cop parody” and more “warrior princess.”

If he ever found a time when Judy wasn’t beautiful, he’d know he was hallucinating.

“Okay,” she said quietly, holding her gun in both paws. “I don’t hear anybody moving, but they’ll be expecting bunny ears. Do you  _smell_ anybody?”

“I smell everybody,” he replied at a whisper. “It’s not like scents stop being there just because their owners go away.”

“I guess we’ll just have to risk it, then.” She pointed to a blue four-door on the other side of the town square. It looked eerie, now that there was nobody there. “Let’s head for that car. You know how to hotwire, right?”

“What do I look like, a car thief? I did my job right back in the day, mammals would just give me their keys. With a smile.”

“Then I’ll have to do it. You’ll have to  _drive.”_

Well, scat. Nick really hated driving.

...Wait.

“How do you know how to hotwire a car!?”

“Dad taught me. He made sure all of us kits could drive ourselves out of the fields if an accident happened or a fire started. I’m  _t_ _errible_ at it, and I’ve never done it when I wasn’t allowed. We’ll feel very guilty later, but I’d rather steal a car than get murdered.”

He rolled his eyes. “Country folk.”

“Our backwards ways are gonna save your tail, so follow me, Slick.”

They sneaked around the square, using the stalls for cover, and as they got closer to the car, Nick almost relaxed. The station was less than two miles away at this point, but the car would provide more cover and keep them in the open for much less time. Plus, and this was the  _important_ bit, he was tired of running. They’d probably done ten miles on foot just today, and he wasn’t happy about it.

_Almost...there…_

A shot pinged against a metal crate behind them and someone cried, “Get ‘em!”

“Why,” he lamented, eyeing the car. If they made a mad dash, they’d probably make it, but there was no way they’d be able to hotwire it before the bullets broke the glass, because movies were 100% wrong about the time it took to do pretty much anything. They would have to deal with their attackers before trying to leave. “Why does it always have to be  _us?”_

Another shot just missed Judy’s ear by a fraction, and Nick...well, he didn’t see red. That was a literary trick, not a thing that mammals actually did. But he did get angry, which was basically the same thing, but with more focus. He’d try for nonlethal, but he didn’t think he’d mind too much if whoever had shot at Judy went down muzzle-first and never got back up again.

He fired and winced as the buckshot tore apart his target. That slightly-oversized-for-a-fox shotgun was too large to be anything but lethal to a bunny. He ducked to avoid a barrage of return fire and  _why was this his life?_

“Follow me to the car,” he breathed, hoping that the metal body would be more protection than the wooden stall. There were already a few holes in it. Judy nodded sharply and they moved in tandem, trying to stay behind cover as much as they could. The bunnies could probably hear them moving, but he had a bunny on his side, too; she would...oh _no._

Her ears couldn’t possibly be at full strength after that terrible Catling gun. Unthinkingly, he pushed her to the ground as he caught sight of three bunnies too close to them for comfort, and with a  _bang bang_ they all three dropped, gore spattering on the wood of the stall they’d been using for cover. He gripped Judy’s arm and practically dragged her around to the opposite side of the car.

By his estimation, there were two more in the square. Maybe three, if one had been hiding the whole time, but he doubted it. He checked over Judy’s body, but found no injuries, which was a relief. Her nose twitched as he asked, “Are you okay?”

She just  _looked_ at him, the way he might look at a giant cup of coffee, and he tried again. “Carrots? What’s wrong?”

“Nick, I...I think I lied, when I said I wanted to marry you,” she said finally, her expression settling into wonder. “It’s not because you're my partner on the force, or because end of life stuff is simpler if we’re married, or because of the meager tax benefits, or because you're good in bed. I want to marry you because you’re my best friend and I love you. I’m  _in_ love with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you because you're you, and the thought of ever waking up to someone else is intolerable. You drive me crazy and your fur gets stuck in the drain and sometimes I want to strangle you after a really bad joke, but that just makes me love you more. We might only live another few minutes, so I needed to tell you that now. Just in case.”

“Ugh, get a room,” shouted one of the bunnies. It was Pete Wicker, the hare from the hotel. He shot, unsuccessfully, in their general direction.

Judy stood up, shot Wicker directly in the chest, and retorted, “We had a room and you blew it up, ya turnip-headed lunatic!”

Wicker glubbed in response.

“Anyway,” said Judy earnestly, grabbing Nick’s paw, “what do you say? Do you want to do this for real? Marry for love?”

He grinned at her, baring his fangs. “That other practical stuff was all you, Darlin. You had me at felony tax evasion.”

“Then you’d better survive this, because we are going suit shopping when we get home.”

“Please.” He hefted his shotgun and scanned the surrounding area, taking a potshot at the annoying Evelyn Leapyear, who scampered away quickly. Nick laughed and added, “You can wear a suit if you want, but I’m wearing a purple dress with a sweetheart neckline and ruched sleeves, and I am going to look  _fantastic.”_

* * *

They didn’t get to hotwire the car. Apparently, it was a thing in Meadowbrook to lock your car doors.

_(“I could’ve told you that,” he said smugly, to which she replied, “What kind of idiot locks their car in the country?”)_

Instead, they made their way quietly, and thankfully unobstructed, the 1.8 miles up Main Street on foot. Nick wasn't precisely sure what he'd do if the police were in on the crazy scheme to "kill the outsiders," or whatever this was, but he imagined it would be swift and violent. He motioned for Judy to go first; she was shorter and faster, so she'd be able to ascertain the threat level much more easily. And while Nick wasn't always comfortable putting her tail on the line, he wasn't going to get them both killed with stupid machismo.

"Lieutenant," came Stripely's voice from inside. "Sweet! You's alive!"

"Get in here before someone sees you," added Rose. "I been hearin' some crazy scat."

Judy reached back to tug Nick forward by his beltloop. It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless; she wasn't going to leave him in this madhouse. Or at least, she was going to brave the madhouse with him. He was probably reading  _way_ too much into the tiny possessive gesture, but it made him feel better, so it wasn't like he was just going to stop. That would be dumb.

Nick took a seat and Judy sat right in his lap, seemingly unconcerned by the picture they made. That was okay. Nick wanted his paws around her anyway. They were shaking, he noticed vaguely, and whenever he was scared, Judy gave him strength. He was pretty sure it worked both ways. And anyway, who cared what these country bumpkins had to say? They weren't staying in Meadowbrook. Nick would eat his own adrenal glands before staying in Meadowbrook a second longer than he had to. Meadowbrook was terrible, and if animals didn't hate it, they were suspicious.

"We got attacked," Judy told Stripely and Rose, leaning back into Nick and gripping the fur on his left arm. Yeah, she was scared too. "And, um. We killed a few of them. I mean, we didn't mean to kill the mammals in your care, but it was them or us, and we didn't want to die, and  _today has been terrible and why is everyone insane."_

"You's a ruttin' idiot," Fish Sticks put in.

"You're not helping," retorted Judy.

Nick squeezed a little tighter and murmured, "He can't understand you."

The bird bobbed his head. "Go eat scat!"

"I know he can't understand me, but it felt good to yell at him anyway." Judy took a deep breath and let it out slowly before returning her attention to Rose and Stripely. "Do either of you know what the carrot-pickin' heck is going on here?"

"Well, Doethan juss left a while back. Said 'e heard shots. Then he poked 'is head right back in an' said we oughtta stay inside, cos the locals was gunnin' for us preds. Tried to call y'all, but it went straight ta voicemail."

"Our suite got blown up," Nick informed Rose. 

"That there's mighty unfortunate," said Stripely, which Nick thought was an inadequate summary of the morning's events. "We got word the Leapyears' autotill got busted this mornin'. Musta been a lie ta cover up the explosion. You know what happened?"

"No clue. And I'm not about to go back there just to investigate. We got a colleague of ours back in Zootopia to set up some backup for us, but as of now it's a waiting game." Nick frowned. "You didn't know anything about what was going to happen?"

Both Stripely and Rose shrugged. In a way, it was nice that they weren't freaking out nearly as much as Nick was, although it was possible they were just really,  _really_ good at hiding it. Rose caught Judy's eye and replied, "I would say they was tryin' ta go through with their coup, but that don't explain why they's huntin' you."

"Actually," Stripely put in, "it might, Axel. We ain't best of the best out here, but Miz Judy here is a bona-fide police lieutenant from Zootopia, engaged to a hotshot detective whose species - and I hope you ain't offended, Detective Wilde, but I ain't sayin' nothin' but local rumors - is, yanno, inherently questionable. Better ta get rid of the outsiders first, then go after the lesser threat. 'S what I'd do, if I was stupid as scat an' had somethin' ta prove."

"I'd like to look through the records again," Nick told them. Reluctant as he was to let go of Judy, they couldn't just sit there waiting for someone to rescue them (or for something to ruin their day further). 

"You's a ruttin' idiot," said Fish Sticks, and Nick grinned at the sight of Judy's clenched paw. 

"Don't kill the bird," he warned her.

"I'm not gonna kill the bird, Nick."

"But you want to."

"I want a lot of things I can't have. I'm a complete sweetheart, and I would never, ever hurt someone else's property because that's a terrible thing to do."

He didn't bring up the fact that during their six-year stint as partners, Judy's enthusiasm for justice had racked up a hefty amount of collateral damage. It had terrified Clawhauser, annoyed Bogo, and pissed off a large portion of Little Rodentia. She tended to be the kind of animal who made for a great feature film, but in real life, would be an MR nightmare. Fortunately, she had toned it down dramatically since their first case together, and he suspected she'd just said out loud what she told herself every time she had a mean thought about someone. 

"Feel free to hole up in the archives," Rose told them, and then he grinned widely, baring his teeth. "I draw a line at kissin', though. I ain't keen ta smell y'all ever time I need ta file a case."

* * *

Nick’s heart sank when he saw it. Despite all his cynicism, he hadn’t _really_ wanted to believe that there was someone out there who really was out to get him. He’d bolstered himself for this moment, but there was a difference between a pessimistic acceptance of the future and a current event.

Five days after the non-charging of all the bunnies following Malcolm Coates into battle, Gregory Spottson had picked up Marla Gooseberry to formally charge her with zoicide. The long-necked bastard had known the whole time that they were walking into a political minefield, and he hadn’t said a single word about it. If nothing else, that was a dick move, but Nick was more inclined to believe that Spottson had hoped they’d do something to rile up the locals once more.

“I knew he had it out for us,” he groused, passing the note to Judy. It wasn’t even a real case note; it was more of a memo that would be missed by anyone looking for real information. Nick had only come across it accidentally.

Judy made a funny angry noise. “Okay, Doethan Velvet needs to be fired. Or kicked in the nuts. Or both. What kind of case note is this?”

“It ain’t one,” said Stripely, looking over her shoulder with a big frown. “At’s the kinda note we give each other when somethin’ needs done. Why’d Doe…you don’t think…”

“Yes,” said Nick grimly, “I do. Hey, November Rain, tell us about the armory. When did Spottson start sending you guns?”

“Bout six months ago,” replied Rose, and without warning, Judy scampered toward the armory. Nick and Stripely exchanged Significant Looks and followed.

Nick, animally, was completely unsurprised when they heard a long, shrill _no!_

“They took the .300 Savage and the Bearetta M9,” she told them miserably, gesturing inside the room, as they rounded the corner with Rose in tow. The room was nearly empty, the only weapons left sized for mammals much larger than bunnies. “I would chew off my own toes to get a chance at shooting those, and now…”

“Thought you couldn’t shoot, Miz Judy,” Stripely teased.

“You’re basically a detective,” she shot back, but her tone lacked bite. She just sounded sad. “You know as well as I do that sometimes you have to pretend if it means getting cooperation.”

“You did a real job on O’Hare, though.” The badger frowned at the memo again, but continued his previous line of thought. “She come back a-sayin’ you ain’t so bad after all, an’ gushin’ about ya quick learnin’ skills.”

Nick blew out air, trying to put the pieces together, but he had no idea what pieces they had compared to how many more they needed to get a whole picture. “About O’Hare. What’s her story?”

“Adopted by a nice bunny couple.”

“No, I mean why is she a constable? Why does she work for the Meadowbrook police?”

“Jess wants ta help make the world a better place, I guess.”

Nick tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “Well, the armory is nearly cleaned out, thanks to…whoever. My guess is Doethan Velvet probably had something to do with it, maybe O’Hare as well. I doubt it was Sheriff Westing, but we can’t take him off the table just yet. What do we know about Black?”

He didn’t say that both Stripely and Rose were still suspicious. He didn’t have to, if they were as smart as he suspected.

Rose took the lead on the question this time. “Black’s old as dirt. Got a good head on ‘is shoulders, though. _He_ wanted to charge all them bunnies what charged the station with assault, an’ thinkin’ back, he mighta been the only sane one. We could call ‘im now, him an’ the Sheriff, if the phones was workin’, but they been down since this mornin’.”

“Yeah, I noticed the box was smashed in, probably with a hammer,” Nick told him. “No offense, November Rain, but this little village is the worst.”

“Has its charms,” Stripely countered, though he didn’t sound very convinced.

“The _Savage,”_ Judy moaned.

Nick rolled his eyes. Really, if she was this gloomy over a rutting _gun,_ what would she be like if she lost him? Useless, that was what. So he just had to make sure he outlived her. Or, at the very least, they both died of old age instead of on the field. Yeah. That sounded good. Growing old together. Maybe on an island somewhere, sipping blueberry ale and listening to the ocean waves through the open window, curtains flapping in the wind…

He could still hardly believe she loved him for real. He was so disgustingly lucky. Then again, this was probably whatever passed for karma in the land of the rational. The universe paying him back for all the good things he’d been lucky enough to find and keep.

(He was pretty sure that wasn’t how karma actually worked. If he remembered Priya’s ramblings right, karma was, like, cumulative action or something. Who cared? Staying alive was more important.)

“So the station is more or less a safe spot, if we keep the doors locked,” he reasoned aloud, “but that means staying here with no phones, no food except whatever you two brought for today’s meals, and no idea of who’s alive or what’s going on. We know it’s probable that Velvet is involved somehow, and Spottson probably set us up for whatever this is, but we need information and we need to get in contact with Clawhauser again for a status update from both sides. I say we gather what’s left of the guns we can actually use, stay together as a group, and make our way to the Sheriff’s house. He’s got to have a phone. We can try to contact Black and O’Hare too, try to figure out whether or not they’re involved.”

“I call the M&P Shield,” said Judy immediately, digging the small lightweight pawgun from a little cubby in the corner. It was a beauty, a sleek black Smith & Bunson with a trigger pull like a _dream,_ but Nick preferred something with a little more bite. After all, her precision made small hollow point rounds worthwhile, but Nick’s paws were perfectly sized to fit neither smaller guns nor larger ones, so he needed to make up the difference in accuracy with buckshot or larger rounds.

“You can have it,” said Rose. “Fact, it’s best you take it an’ the Ursa Thunder. Too bad the Nanos and the Rugers was all taken.”

“Well, we know it was bunnies raided us cos of the sizes,” Stripely put in, which seemed optimistic until Nick really considered _how many bunnies_ there were in town and how much of the armory was gone.

“We’re screwed,” he summarized, and no one – not even Judy – corrected him.

* * *

Dusk had fallen by the time Rose locked the station doors behind him, which meant Judy was the most qualified to take the lead. Rabbits, once upon a time, had been crepuscular; her eyes were suited to dawn and dusk, whereas ancestrally nocturnal or diurnal animals tended to have better vision when everything _wasn’t_ dim and obnoxious. Little ancestral tics usually didn’t matter anymore, until suddenly they did. Like now. Truthfully, back in ancient times, predators had always had the advantage. In the age of civilization, though, Judy’s ancestral talents were enviable.

(He would never say it aloud, but he was certain it was no coincidence that bunnies had been the last mammals to start speaking, but the first to build weapons.)

The silence was eerie. Nick had only been in Meadowbrook for a few days, but he’d come to know the hum of activity, the shifting sounds of mammals walking, the clusters of gossip. Now, there was nothing. Not a child playing, not a farmer peddling canned fruit, not anything at all. He didn’t think the whole town was in on it; most of them were probably doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing in a time of crisis: staying in their homes and leaving it to the professionals. He just wished he knew which ones _were_ involved, so they could know which houses to avoid.

In hindsight, they should have taken a different route. It made sense that he and Judy would eventually come back to the scene of the explosion to try and salvage whatever they could, and a small group of heavily-armed bunnies were waiting for them near the wreckage.

Stripely threw himself to the ground and uttered a very ugly word that Nick would never say, just in case Ruth’s mom sense went off and she teleported just to stick soap in his mouth. Or Judy did. It was kind of a toss-up, honestly, and he didn’t want to find out which of his favorite females would be more irritated.

Nick hid with Judy behind a large metal trash can (it never worked in the movies, but it was the best they could do) and Rose just took a shot in the direction from which the volley of bullets had come. Unfortunately, there was no cover available for him.

“I didn’t even _smell them,”_ Nick hissed into Judy’s ear.

“Because it’s all ash and adrenaline,” she hissed back. “And whatever they used to try to blow us up, which I’m still mad about.”

“C’mon,” shouted Stripely, beginning to run. It was the best course of action if they wanted to conserve ammunition – which they did; it wasn’t unlimited, and they couldn’t see their targets through the haze of dying fire and the murk of dusk – and nobody wanted to get shot by bunnies who were looking more and more psychotic, in the medical sense of the word. Only someone completely divorced from reality, or at least very, very stupid, would think that shooting cops would be a great long-term solution. The residents here had proven themselves to be, if not geniuses, at least not idiots.

Nick threw himself after Stripely, trusting Judy to follow. It was a hard balance sometimes, knowing when she needed to actually be protected and when he was just being an overprotective weirdo, but that didn't matter because _they were getting shot at_ and why, again? He was so tired of running, and explosions, and crazy mammals crazying it up in crazytown.

The door was unlocked, because of course it was. Stripely jumped through it, making way for Nick to dive into the relatively safe area, closely followed by Judy and Rose. Stripely slammed the door behind Rose and locked it. Judy’s ears were up, tracking the noises outside. Nick could smell ash and fear and sweat, but no fresh blood. That was good. If nobody was bleeding, they wouldn’t have to leave anybody behind. That never turned out well in the movies.

“Sheriff oughtta be here,” said Rose, frowning into the darkness. Louder, he called, “Ron? Mary?”

The house was eerily silent, but for a strange dripping noise coming from the bathroom. Judy, of course, went straight for it, because Judy Hopps always faced danger head-on instead of doing the rational thing and running away. Or at least performing a basic threat assessment. Honestly, one of the reasons she was so terrifying to criminals was her lack of fear when it came to hunting down evildoers like murderers and animals who double-parked. She had a weird fear of olives, but she expected criminals to cower in front of her. And cower they did, mostly because she always got what she wanted.

Nick, having once been one of those mammals who’d been humbled by her sheer force of will, could attest to that.

“Stop right there, Hopps,” he said in a halfhearted attempt to get her to _not_ put herself in danger.

“Come with me, if you’re so worried,” she countered, and because he was her partner, he did his job and backed her up. He didn’t look at Stripely or Rose. He could _smell_ them judging him, and he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

Instead, he left them with an order. “Get O’Hare and Black on the phone, or on Westing’s extra radio. We’re going to look for the Sheriff.”

Judy peered around the corner of the door, bending her knees so he could view the bathroom mostly unobstructed by her ears. The dripping was coming from the sink, but there was a faint odor coming from the bathtub that he hadn’t picked up before; he didn’t want to know what was under the heavy slab on top of the tub, but he was a cop. It was his job to find out.

“C’mon,” he said, nudging her forward. “There’s nothing moving in here. It’s safe to open the cover.”

They worked together quietly to slide the slab to the side, and immediately, Nick regretted it. Judy gagged at the smell, but Nick outright doubled over, unable to do more than cover his snout and hope that the stench of death and cleaning chemicals wouldn’t knock him out. There were times when having a keen sense of smell was _not_ a gift; this was definitely one of them.

There, dismembered and left to soak in a chemical solution, were the distinct bodies of Ronald and Mary Westing.

“We need to call Clawhauser,” Judy said, breathing into her paws, presumably so that she wouldn’t breathe in the smell.

“You’re telling me. I’ll get him on the phone as soon as possible.”

“Who could _do this,”_ she asked him. Through the dim light, he saw what was probably horror in her eyes.

“Pretty much anyone.”

“No, I mean…who could do this without feeling bad about it?”

“Oh.” He guided her gently out the door and closed it firmly behind them. There was nothing they could do about the Sheriff and his wife; they just needed to keep moving. “I have no idea, Carrots. But we just spent the day hiding from gunfire. We need to assume that everyone here in Meadowbrook is capable of killing and chopping up a family of wolves.”

“I really liked Mary,” she sighed, but she allowed him to lead her into the kitchen, where Rose and Stripely were waiting. At the sight of them, she straightened and dropped into something more professional and less vulnerable. Nick was stupidly touched that he was allowed to see the softer side of her. “Ronald and Mary Westing are dead. Have you found O’Hare or Black?”

“They’s headed here now,” Rose informed them. “Ron’s _dead?”_

“Cut up and hidden in the tub,” Nick supplied, shuddering at the memory of the smell. “I don’t suggest going in there without a mask.”

“Yeah.”

Stripely punched the wall hard enough to make Judy jump from the sound of it.

Judy’s frown deepened. “Did anyone talk to Velvet?”

“Ain’t a great idea ta invite traitors in the house,” said Rose, snorting, “so no.”

Her nose twitched. “I just don’t want to leave him vulnerable if he’s _not_ in on it.”

“Doe’s a prey supremacist, an’ so traditionalist ‘e might as well be a-goin’ backwards. Me an’ Rose here, we prefer our freedom with a side of equality, an’ he’s allus talkin’ about that plan up in Zootopia that y’all stopped. Says us preds oughtta be collared or killed. Even if he ain’t involved in the shootin’, he ain’t innocent.”

“They won’t kill him just for being a constable?”

“Does it matter? Mammals is dyin’, Miz Judy. Ron’s decomposin’ in his own bathroom. You got a hefty body count. Velvet’s smart enough to lay low if he’s innocent, and if he’s not, whatever comes down on ‘is head ain’t our problem.”

Nick ignored the other three in favor of calling Clawhauser again on Westing’s land line. After one ring, he got the usual greeting. “Ben Clawhauser speaking.”

“Hi, Clawhauser, it’s Wilde.”

“Oh, good, you’re still alive! Listen, I got you reinforcements. They should be there shortly; Dani decided to take a fleet of helicopters, because she wants to get her paws on you before you die.”

“What does _that_ mean,” Nick asked warily.

“That you have the best backup, even if she’s a bit of a…well, a cold-hearted jerk.”

“Coming from you, Clawhauser, that’s practically a condemnation. Listen, we’re holed up with Constable Stripely and Constable Rose at Sheriff Westing’s place. He’s dead. We didn’t kill him. We’re expecting two other constables to show up, but there’s an angry crowd of bunnies surrounding 62 Main Street and they’ve already tried to blow us up once; I don’t have any faith that they won’t try again.”

“Sit tight, Wilde. Dani’s the best. She’ll get you out. I’ll call her to tell her where you are. And if they try to blow you up, go somewhere else; she’ll find you.”

Ben hung up again, because of course he did.

Fortunately, Nick didn’t have time to be irritated, because the back door creaked open. Judy raised her Smith & Bunson and aimed it at the increasing crack, only letting out a sighing breath when she realized it was O’Hare and Black, who were dragging an unconscious rabbit behind them. Nick was pretty sure it was Evelyn Leapyear, though she was much muddier than she had been earlier.

“Got us an interrogation victim,” said O’Hare cheerfully, closing the door and locking it behind her. “Shall we tie her up?”

“Let me get my cuffs – _sweet sassafras,_ they were lost in the fire,” Judy seethed.

“Wow. I guess cuffs really could save the day. If only we had any,” teased Nick, preparing himself for Judy’s arm-punch. It didn’t come. She was too busy looking around the kitchen.

Leaning into a cupboard on her paws and knees, she asked, “Anyone see any zip-ties?”

He had to forcibly remove his eyes from her posterior if he wanted to have a single coherent thought in his head, after the images _that_ had conjured up.

* * *

Evelyn gasped when Nick threw the glass of water on her. He’d wanted to do a whole bucket, but Westing didn’t have one. Stripely had her secured in his arms so that they could ensure she didn’t get away.

“Good morning, Evelyn,” said Nick. After a brief conference, they had decided he would be their spokesmammal for a few reasons, including her obvious speciesism and his ability to charm the stripes off a zebra. “Glad to see you among the living once more.”

“Can’t say I feel the same,” she said dryly. All things considered, she was handling her capture well.

“Yes, I’m sure you hate me. I’m a city-boy, after all.”

“A _fox.”_ She bared her teeth. It wasn’t as scary (or hot) as when Judy did it. “Just another red-toothed bastard thinks he’s better’n us.”

“What is it with the red teeth,” he wondered aloud, not overly invested in the answer.

“Y’all eat bunnies. Allus did. An’ ya too shifty ta believe when you say it’s over.”

He rolled his eyes. “Nothing I haven’t heard before, lady. Listen, you have some information we want. If you don’t want to find out whether or not foxes still eat bunnies, you might want to tell us.”

Leapyear’s eyes grew very, very wide. “Officer Hopps? You wouldn’t let that…that _menace_ threaten a bunny, would you?”

“Who says it’s a threat?” Judy smiled fondly at him, and it sent warmth through his belly. “You know, I’m awfully hungry too. Maybe he’ll share. I’m sure rabbit tastes just as good in pie as tofu does.”

 _Bless_ her. Throwbacks were _so_ sexy.

Taking the opening, Nick asked, “Now that we have your attention, Evelyn, tell me why you’re trying to kill us.”

“You think ya so smart,” she said, “but you ain’t. You’s a monster. You _and_ ya fiancée. Everthing good an’ right, you spit on like it’s nothin’. You’s a bad influence up there in the city, and it’s jess our good fortune you’s the sign he sent.”

“The _sign?”_ Nick watched her. “Are you some kind of religious nutjob?”

“Pretty sure she means Spottson, Nick,” Judy put in.

“Yeah, I know, Carrots, I was trying to be insulting.”

“Don’t call a bunny _Carrots,_ you heathen,” cried Evelyn.

“Sorry.” Nick smiled gently at her. “I’m just a shifty fox, though, so can you really blame me? Listen, I don’t want to hurt you. Well, okay, I do want to hurt you, because you shot at me. But I don’t want to torture you for information. It’s not fun. Did Spottson come up with this plan?”

“You really think a giraffe would be smart enough to come up with this?”

Nick privately thought that in a battle of wits between Spottson and Evelyn, the only losers would be the innocent bystanders, but he was biased. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, he ain’t. Spottson’s jess a real convincing parrot.” She shot a venomous look at Stripely. “Just like the one I _killed_ down at the station.”

Horrified, Stripely asked, “You killed _Fish Sticks?”_

A quick succession of things happened next. Stripely’s arms relaxed as the situation sank in. Following the realization, Evelyn’s teeth sank into his neck, which were then followed by a pocketknife to his temple. O’Hare screamed, and as Stripely slumped, the caribou whipped out her stun gun and shot Evelyn with it.

An overwhelming smell rose up and Nick’s stomach sank as he realized the settings must have been too high for a bunny to handle.

“Two more dead,” he muttered, frustrated. O’Hare just threw up.

Judy rushed to the caribou’s side, careful not to brush against Rose, who looked like he could kill something. Rose and Stripely had been close partners. Even before Nick had been in love with Judy, he would have been a little unstable had he lost Judy to a psycho murderer.

Nick’s ears rang as he slumped onto the couch, surveying the scene. Judy was saying something to O’Hare, who didn’t look comforted at all. Rose was pretending he wasn’t crying. The bodies would need to be moved, and they would need to eat at some point, but all he wanted was to curl up with Judy and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.

After all, the rest of the world _sucked._

* * *

The sound of the chopper was music to Nick’s exhausted ears, but he didn’t let go of Judy or get up from their slouch on Westing’s couch. Judy’s ears twitched more than her nose did, allowing him to track what was probably happening outside; from the left came faint footsteps she could probably identify by sound. Bunnies shouted. Guns went off. He could imagine a whole team of rhinos in riot gear, and if that was what Clawhauser had sent them, he would kiss that cheetah as soon as they got back to Zootopia.

Judy nuzzled his chest and he moved his paws to her sides. With careful claws and a firm tongue, he went through variations of his usual grooming routine, hoping to relax her; she needed it. And, if he was honest, so did he. Nick always felt better when Judy wasn’t feeling bad.

_("You need to promise me you'll take care of the foster kits," Judy said, and Nick could tell it was more about giving O'Hare a purpose than anything, because O'Hare's vehement promise did nothing but make Judy more rigid.)_

An indeterminate amount of time later – perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps two hours, Nick was too involved in grooming Judy into a stupor – a knock sounded on the door. O’Hare, who was still trembling but otherwise recovered, answered it, her stun gun at the ready.

A sleek orange tigress strode into the room, fixed her eyes on Nick, and nodded crisply. “I see you survived. Good.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty glad about it too,” he snarked.

She rolled her eyes. “They warned me about you. I hope your bite is worse than your yip, Wilde, for everyone’s sake. My name is Danielle Furreya, AIA.”

Judy’s head shot up, comfort forgotten, and her eyes narrowed at the tigress. “What’s AIA doing, rescuing two nobodies from a scuffle in the middle of nowhere?”

“Pawlee? Amber? Take the locals for debriefing while I fill Hopps and Wilde in on the situation,” said Furreya. “Hopps and Wilde, say goodbye to your friends and walk with me.”

“Remember your promise,” Judy said to O’Hare, hopping off the couch. She gave Black a brief hug and added, “Thank you _so much_ for what you did earlier.”

“Weren’t no problem, Miz Judy,” said Black bashfully. Nick only didn’t roll his eyes because he was tired of doing it.

“November Rain,” he said to the ocelot, who was drooping from exhaustion.

“You just can’t let it go, can you?”

“Nope.” Nick grinned. “You’d make a great cop. You should sign up for the academy. Maybe run for Sheriff sometime in the future.”

“Wouldn’t be the same without Harry,” Rose replied sadly, looking toward the bedroom. “But I ain’t sayin’ no.”

“Goodbye, Rose,” said Judy.

“Take care of yaself, Miz Judy.”

Furreya growled quietly. “Come along, now. We have things to discuss.”

Nick took Judy’s paw and followed the tigress outside. The scene was a study in contrasts; the darkness of evening had enveloped the town, but the headlamps worn by every ABI agent made the darkness seem almost artificial. The remaining aggressive bunnies were helpless in the face of megafauna in full riot gear, so they were in no danger even as they walked down the street toward the helicopter standing at the edge of town.

“You two love causing headaches, don’t you?”

“It’s the WildeHopps guarantee,” Nick agreed.

Furreya stopped and spun around, frowning sternly. “You do realize that you’re dead, don’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Judy’s frown was less intimidating on the surface, but Nick knew that she wasn’t happy, and that was Not Okay. “If that’s some kind of _threat-”_

“Not a threat, no, a legal standing. Greg Spottson officially notified your families of your tragic demise and the appropriate paperwork has been filed. I imagine he’s still waiting for his friends in Meadowbrook to deliver your bullet-riddled remains to him. Do you know what was supposed to happen here?”

Nick shrugged. “We were supposed to die, that much is obvious, but we’re not interested in dying just yet.”

“Spottson was a prey supremacist. He helped finance Dawn Bellwether’s regressivist goals when she was still Mayor of Zootopia, and he used his vast contacts to expand his sphere of influence.”

“I always thought he just didn’t like us,” said Judy.

“Oh, he hated you. You represent everything regressivists hate. You’re both forward-thinking individuals who put…aggressive effort into not only enforcing the law, but making sure the law is just. You do community outreach projects with underprivileged children and families. You have an interspecies relationship. You live together, but you are not married and have no children. You believe that equality is important and you do not keep your heads down around dissenters. But there are many mammals who hate other mammals. Most of them don’t set those mammals up to get slaughtered.”

Nick looked at her thoughtfully. “So what happened? We know Spottson sent us here because of the planned coup; did he expect that we’d die and they would succeed? What then? It’s not like one tiny town can have a huge effect.”

“I imagine we’ll know more once we arrest and interrogate him, but if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say this was an opportunistic move, nothing more. Use the coup to get rid of his two most problematic officers as well as the predators working law enforcement out here, then go in and install his own animals as peacekeepers. Meadowbrook is heavily-armed and supplies most of the fruit used in Zootopia; it might be full of hicks, but it’s a strategic piece in a long game.”

“Spottson never struck me as the type to amass political capital,” said Nick.

“Did he strike you as the type to order a hit on his own officers?”

“Fair point.”

“Okay, but I’m still confused,” Judy said, squeezing Nick’s paw. “Why are you, Danielle Furreya, here right now? You’re AIA, not ABI or ZPD.”

“Yes, well. I owed Ben a favor,” said Furreya, sounding vaguely embarrassed. “I have an offer for both of you. You _are_ dead, so I suggest you think it over carefully.”

Nick almost choked on his own spit as everything hit home. “You’re asking us to come work for you?”

“It would be much easier to use the identities we have already prepared for you than to try and correct the grievous errors committed by your former Chief. That’s a snarl of paperwork that could go on for months, and in the meantime, you wouldn’t be able to work, or even drive.”

“But…what about our families? My parents? Ruth? My siblings? If we disappear, they’ll be mourning us even though we’re alive.”

“Hopps, the AIA is not what it is portrayed in movies. We would not be so callous as to keep you from your families, provided they are able to keep secrets.” Furreya gave them a once-over and handed a bag to Nick before ushering them closer to the chopper. “This will take you to Bunnyburrow, which is a perfect place for you to meet up with our training team. What you do with the week between your arrival and theirs is none of my business, but I do suggest you lie low. Incidentally, Ruth Wilde was encouraged to take the afternoon train to Bunnyburrow. Whatever you decide, further travel is not required.”

“So…even if we decide not to work for you…”

“You won’t be silenced, but you will regret it when you realize how difficult it is to navigate life when you’re officially dead. I believe you will do what’s best. After all, you both have talked about making the world a better place. With the AIA, you really can.”

Somehow, that made it all okay for Judy. He felt her tension slip away and he dug through the bag as she hopped in place a few times. It contained a couple of AIA IDs and documentation for a male fox and female rabbit. Boring, but useful.

“Thank you, Agent,” Judy gushed, shaking Furreya’s paw like it was the only thing keeping her alive. Furreya looked startled and flapped her other paw uselessly, which was actually a pretty common response to Judy’s enthusiasm. “We won’t let you down!”

Furreya winced. Nick, being Nick, seized the moment (and her other paw) and mimicked Judy’s tone. “Yes,  _thank you_ for this  _amazing_ opportunity! We’re ever so grateful we can hardly express it! You’re the best, Agent Furreya!”

The agent leaned her head back with a great sigh and mumbled, “I already regret this. I  _did not_ sign up for this.”

“We’ll watch you oh so very closely,” Nick ‘reassured’ the tigress. “We’ll shadow your every move. We’ll never leave your side.”

“Ahaha, that won’t be necessary,” said Furreya, jumping back almost three feet and raising her paws. Apparently, AIA agents could be ruffled. “Let’s just...let you get things squared away...and learn new things...with trainers who have more experience, with...oh, look at my wrist, it’s time to go, duty calls.”

Furreya fled to the limousine waiting in the shadows. Judy furrowed her brow. “She seemed a little...stranger than I thought she’d be. Bit skittish, for an AIA agent.”

Nick decided not to tell her  _why_ the agent had made such a hasty retreat. It was better that way. She wouldn’t try to suppress her enthusiasm next time they met if she didn’t _know,_ and it was so fun to watch her surprise and terrify unsuspecting mammals. Instead, he helped her into the chopper and said, “Yeah, that was a little weird.”

“What are we going to do now that we’re dead,” she asked him as the helicopter took off. They watched the city grow smaller until it seemed like a model for ants. Her paw in his was solid and reassuring.

He grinned, flashed his shiny new AIA ID, and replied, “The same thing we do every day, Carrots. Try to save the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened is, I downed an alarming amount of rum, stayed drunk for days, remembered a conversation I had with a commenter on another story I'm writing, and penned most of a thing where I got to mock my hometown. I wanted Judy to have an opportunity to showcase her own talents and knowledge, in contrast to all the stories about Nick using his scamming talents on a case, but I didn’t want it to be yet another “Nick and Judy visit Bunnyburrow for x non-work reason” story.


End file.
